HOW providential that our first column for 2025 falls on New Year’s Day. “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘It will be happier.'” Thus Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate of Great Britain, welcomed one of the new years of his lifetime.
American writer and scholar Mark Van Doren said “The mind of man has always lived a double life, or had a double function: to go forth and return. Or perhaps one should say, to discover and remember.” It is a time for looking back to celebrate the year just passed, to be grateful for whatever it brought us, whether it made us joyful, desolate or dissatisfied, it has contributed to what we have become, which is something to be embraced and to improve upon. And it is a time to look forward, hope that the new year will bring better days, and because better days just don’t happen, we resolve to make them better.
The first month of the year was named after Janus (Ianuarius), the Roman god of beginnings and endings. Janus is often depicted with two faces, which has given him a bad image and made people call treacherous, disloyal persons Janus-faced. In fact, Janus’s two faces — one looking forward and the other looking backward — represent his ability to see both the past and the future. He is also associated with the transition between war and peace, conflict and resolution. The Latin root word of Janus’s name is iānu, meaning door. Fittingly, he is often symbolized by doorways.
This brings to mind that last December 26, Pope Francis opened the special Holy Door for Catholic Jubilee at the Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome, the first such action by a Catholic pontiff. The Pope said he wanted to open the door, one of only five that will be open during the 2025 Catholic Holy Year, to show that “hope does not disappoint.” The year 2025, he said, is the season of Hope.
“In bad moments, we can all think that everything is over,” said the Pope. “Do not lose hope. This is the message I wanted to give you. Do not lose hope.”
A Catholic Jubilee is considered a time of peace, forgiveness and pardon. This Jubilee, dedicated to the theme of hope, will run until Jan. 6, 2026.
Some of us may find it hard to summon up hope in this time of climate crisis, the growing gap between the rich and poor, and artificial intelligence, which was not only seen in early 2024 to affect jobs until 2030; it also proved to be affecting our ability to recognize reality from misinformation, disinformation and fake news.
Rebecca Solnit, acknowledged by Maria Popova as “one of the most singular, civically significant, and poetically potent voices of our time,” asserts that there is a place for hope in the face of these developments.
Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities, she said, recalling that this decade has been remarkable for “movement-building, social change, and deep, profound shifts in ideas, perspective, and frameworks.”
“It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope
I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.”
That’s right, with openings, with doors.
Anne Lamott echoes this with her own perspective, that we have what it takes to pull through.
“Against all odds, no matter what we’ve lost, no matter what messes we’ve made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness which create hope, sufficient unto the day.” Indeed, we may not be in the best of all possible worlds. But we are not trapped inside with no way out. There is a door. In fact, Jesus said “I am the door.” (John 10:9-10)
May 2025 be a year of hope and new beginnings!
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