By DONALD DeMARCO
We are in love with anything that is new, but the love affair does not last very long. What is new quickly transitions into something less lovable. It is only a matter of time before the newborn child moves through the various stages of life and becomes old. The new and the old are firmly interconnected with each other.
The new car depreciates as soon as it leaves the lot and becomes a used car. New clothes are a delight, but after being worn, and faded in time, become eligible for the scrapheap. New ideas are replaced by more new ideas.
What glistened with newness quickly becomes old hat. When we met a friend we ask, “What’s new?” But there is really nothing new under the sun. New York was new when it was founded, but can hardly claim being new after the passing of so many generations. “Out with the old, in with the new,” echoes through the corridors of time.
Yet, what is old was once new and what is new will soon be old.
Is there any reason to believe that anything new will resist the ravages of time? Is there anything new that stays new? And why are we in love with anything that is ephemeral? Why can we not see the ravages the time creates?
“And now,” writes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, “we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” But what are these things that have never been? Do they fulfill promises or bring disappointment? Will there be blessings without curses, pleasure without pain, and life without death? Can there be roses without thorns?
Nathaniel Hawthorne painted a more realistic, if more bleak, picture of what follows from the new. “The founders of a new colony Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”
The year 2021 saw the passing of innumerable celebrities. It is an occurrence that never skips a beat. To cite a mere dozen, we can name Christopher Plummer, Stephen Sondheim, Jane Powell, Norm Macdonald, Michael Constantine, Hank Aaron, Tommy Lasorda, Don Sutton, Leon Spinks, Elgin Baylor, Ed Asner, and Jerry Remy. Even the stars perish!
We are hopeful creatures and our perpetual optimism remains undiminished. We bid each other a Happy New Year while ignoring the potential calamities that the year will usher in.
Each time the earth completes its revolution
People make a resolution
To gain for past sins absolution
Yet soon learn that this is no solution.
We return to the question, “Why do we persist in cherishing anything that is new when we know that it will almost immediately lose its luster?” St. Augustine states, in the tenth chapter of his Confessions, “Late have I loved thee, O beauty ever ancient, ever new.” Augustine has famously averred that our hearts are made for God. It is reasonable, therefore, to think that our affection for anything new is rooted in our innate desire for God because God is ever new. God does not age or wear out. He remains ever new, since He transcends time. God is the being that stays new. His eternal newness is a magnet that draws us to Him.
We love what is new because it is an intimation of the divinity. But the new things that we find in the world are not divine, only indications that there must be a being whose news never disappoints us.
It is certainly proper and commendable to wish people a “Happy New Year.” In the spirit of St. Augustine, we hope that they will find in the newness of the New Year, a reflection of their desire for God. The New Testament is not only “new” in the sense that it contrasts with the Old Testament, but because it heralds the primacy of love, which itself is forever new. Heaven is a place where everything is eternally new and love remains forever fresh.
Renewal means more than doing something again, like renewing a magazine subscription. It means turning one’s life to God who is forever new. As St. Paul advises us, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
New Year’s Day is an appropriate time to make resolutions since it attunes us with the universe. It is fitting that the beginning of a better life should be in accord with the beginning of a year. We should remember, however, that the cosmos is a creation of God. Our New Year’s resolutions, therefore, would be incomplete if they were not also attuned to God’s Will. The cosmic is an intimation of the theistic.
New Year’s wishes can be superficial or profound. Let us keep in mind the spirit of St. Augustine and wish each other an experience in the following months of something new that reflects what is forever new.
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