Hope and Resurrection: something about New Year’s Celebrations
Today, 01.01.2020, is celebrated the arriving of a new year in the Western world. In the day before, very likely, many people who are now reading this article celebrated with their relatives, friends, beloved ones, have seen some fireworks etc. Many others, instead, had to work on hospitals, or buses, or selling things on the beach to get some money and so on.
No matter in which side we are, something seems to be common among us: the hope that every new year’s eve brings with it. This is why, I suppose, it is so common for us to read messages in our social media saying about the great opportunity that has been given to us in the next 365 days of the new year that has just begun. Opportunities to make peace with those we have been fighting for a long time, to enjoy our time with our family, friends, etc. In other words, the utopia (and here in a good sense) that something new starts and gives us the chance to do things differently of what we have been doing so far.
At first glance, nothing wrong with it. Everyone of us need our own utopias to live and without them, the world would be a heavy burden to carry. However, the utopia, for us christians, has to been seen under biblical hope, which affirms that there is a different world desired by God, that comes from Him to humankind and nature. This, for instance, implies to us the commitment with human causes and ecological environment, the commitment with the poor of our societies in order to make them have an experience of the coming Kingdom of God.
If it is not that way, in the place of hope we create only expectations for the new year. In other words, we will just wait something to happen to solve our problems, in a passive way. If we don’t understand hope as something active, as something that demands us an effective action on the realities that surround us, we have not understood the biblical hope. In this case, we are only in the expectation field that do not commits with the society.
To talk about new year, new life and hope also makes us remember about the resurrection, sign of the christian hope; event that signalizes the yes from God about life and His no about the death, by saying that death has not the last word in the world, that the old things has passed away and everything has been made new, that affirms that if Christ has risen from the death, also we have been raised too, in order to have the experience of being new creature in Christ.
The resurrection that opens the possibility of new life for all people, giving us the opportunity to approach ourselves to God is totally connected with the hope and utopia that we have said before in this text: the opportunity to become more humans, to care more about each other, to fight against deathly structures that remains in our society, to affirm God’s love that makes no differences between people, loving all unconditionally.
Who knows, if you comprehend the new year not only as just one more date in the calendar, and start to see it as connected with the message of resurrection, we would be more aware of christian hope that demands from us a more human behavior?
If our answer is yes, then the first day of the year will not be just a day to rest, but will become a day to makes us remember about the resurrection and makes our hope stronger that it was before.