Reflection on the Ecclesiastical New Year

Happy New Year! May the Lord who rules over times and seasons crown this coming year with the bounty of his mercy; may he water the furrows of our hearts with silence and peace; may he visit the earth, our daily lives with their struggles and joys, and enrich them with the river-flood of his living Water, the torrential grace of the Holy Spirit. May the wide places of this wilderness of temporality drip with the ineffable and immortal; may the hills and valleys of our lifetime be girt with the joy of eternity. May God our Shepherd lead us like a flock toward his everlasting meadows; may the fields of the world be decked with white waves of grain, an abundant harvest of Christian souls to be gathered up at the end of the age.