A New Year’s Blessing

Here we are again at that strange, blessed in-between time, between the old year and the new. I always appreciate this interval between the busy-ness of Christmas and the welcoming of the new year – a kind of fallow space in which to gather the blessings of the year that has passed, and listen to the new hopes and dreams emerging in our hearts for the future. It is a time for gratitude, and also for renewing our commitment to what truly matters.

As I looked back over this year, this passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letter to a Young Poet” spoke particularly to me:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems. … I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all – ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Rilke’s advice is sound not only for aspiring poets but also for anyone discovering their vocation in life, including myself. This time last year, I had just moved to Manila and the future was still very much a blank slate. Much of the blessing of this year then has been in allowing me to ask and to live the question that Rilke asks: what is it that I must do? The year’s journey has been one of trepidation and challenge, as I repeatedly ventured out of my comfort zone to try one thing after another; but also of joy and wonder as I experienced the love of others and opportunities to love in return, in ways I am discovering that are uniquely my own. The contours of the particular divine gift that I am are gradually becoming clearer to me, and I am learning to hold it more tenderly.

One of the turning points in the year that stands out for me was when, for a month earlier this year, I moved out of my own community to live with a community of sisters from another congregation. The idea was that because these sisters habitually spoke Tagalog (the local language here) in their community, it would be an ideal environment for me to learn the language faster. Before moving in with them, I had been frustrated with my seemingly slow progress in learning Tagalog, and starting to doubt if I would ever learn it well enough to do ministry here.

As it turned out, the sisters were so hospitable that when I arrived in their house they automatically began speaking in English! But I still got plenty of practice by helping out with a daily tutorial and feeding programme they hosted for poor children in the neighbourhood, and by interacting with the young women who lived in their shelter.

The hospitality that I experienced, more than the language immersion, was a real and unexpected blessing. The sisters were very welcoming and appreciative of every little thing I offered to do. The children and the young women in their turn were disarmingly innocent and genuine in their desire for affection. Every morning I would walk down the street to the little chapel in which the children gathered for the tutorials, and as soon as they saw me they would run excitedly to meet me – sometimes barefoot, forgetting their shoes – racing to be the first to help me with my bags.

Their welcome of me – with nothing expected in return except the joy of my presence – unexpectedly opened the door for me to an experience of divine love. I realised how my earlier frustrations had come from placing too many expectations on myself and projecting these on others, blinding me to the reality that I was and am, already, loved unconditionally and without limit. When the experience of their love brought me back into my center again – that blessed space in which I am rooted in the love of the One who holds me in existence – then I was truly free to love in return, giving all of myself.


In this experience too was an echo of Rilke: Go into yourself, he said. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. We are so often tempted to look outside of ourselves for affection; for affirmation, perhaps fearing what we might find if we were to venture inwards, behind the masks we put up. But the only answer to the alienation we feel is within, in that place where we are who we are, with our lights and shadows, inextricably entwined with the God who loves us as we are.


With this, I offer you a blessing as we venture forth into the new year:

May you have an open heart
     to welcome the surprising graces
     waiting for you in the new year.

May you pass gently through the ups and downs
     the doubts, the questions, the searching, 
     the moments you might experience as failure
     and the moments of clear joy and of clarity.

May you claim the great gifts you have been given
     of personality, of loving desire, 
     of purpose, of intellect,
     of kind companionship, and of service.

May you always know
     that God is with you
     that God is the source of your strength
     and that God loves you, just as you are.

May this give you the courage
     to pour out all of yourself
     in a loving, endless offering;
     a freely-returned gift 
     to God and God’s creation.