From: Henry Willenborg

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MEMORIAL DAY

 

This weekend we remember, with deep gratitude,  the service given to us by our veterans and all of our current men and women serving our country and the world in the military;  let us pray for all of them and their families and other loved ones.  

 

In gratitude to Fr. Austin Fleming who posted this on his blogsite:

 

To the Soldier, To the Veteran

These things I do not know:
   The sound of a bullet.
   The power of a blast.
   The blood of a comrade.
   The depth of your wound.
   The terror at midnight.
   The dread at dawn.
   Your fear or your pain.

These things I know:
   The sound of your honor.
   The power of your courage.
   The blood of your wound.
   The depth of your strength.
   The terror that binds you.
   The dread that remains.
   Your dignity and your valor.

For these things we pray:
   The sound of your laughter.
   The power of your voice.
   The blood of your yearning.
   The depth of your healing.
   The joy that frees you.
   The hope that remains.
   Your wholeness and your love.

- by Alden Solovy at ToBendLight

 

TRUSTING GOD TO ANSWER

TRUSTING GOD TO ANSWER OUR PRAYERS

 

Is prayer perhaps the most practical application of faith and trust in God?   A good case can be made for this.  Where else or how else other than in prayer do we show so thoroughly that our final trust is in God and not in ourselves or anything of the visible world?  The kind of prayer about which the Gospels speak is more concerned with this trust in God than with guaranteeing us some particular good.   Jesus says that the reason we can trust to receive what we need from God is not that he, Jesus, assists our petition, but that the Father loves us.   Why wouldn't God give us the good we need?   Implicit in the teaching of Jesus on prayer is this:   God loves us and, therefore, desires what is for our good; the Father knows better than we do what is for our good.   Trusting prayer without too much insistence on a specific outcome is what we gradually learn.  Strong, absolute statements about how we need only ask the Father and God will give us that for which we ask are rooted in trusting confidence in God, a confidence eventually leading us to quit trying to tell God what we need.   God loves us, cares for us, and has done so much for us -- why not make known our needs and then simply trust God?   If that is not our practice now,  it seems at least to be the ideal for which we strive, as our prayer life deepens. 

 

(This reflection is by Fr. Don Talafous, OSB and appears in his HOMILIES FOR WEEKDAYS - YEAR 1  for the Saturday of the 6th Week of Easter.)

 

 

PRAYERFUL REFLECTION ON TODAY

 

TODAY IS A SPECIAL DAY

 

(This reflection is by Sr. Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D., and appeared as the daily meditation for May 16, 2015 in the daily devotional,  LIVING  FAITH.)

 

Today is a special day -- even though it may be an "ordinary" day for most of us.   What makes today so special even if it isn't a birthday, anniversary or some other significant event?   It is special because, in the entire history of the universe,  there has never been another day just like today.   In your own lifetime, too, there has never been a day like today either.  What's more, there will never be another day exactly like today again.  Today is the day to which all your preceding days have been leading up to.  And today is the day from which the rest of your life will flow.   If you were aware of how precious this day is,  you certainly would not waste it, nor would you be able to restrain your joy and gratitude.

 

The great British writer G. K. Chesterton wrote this poem at the end of an ordinary day:   "Here dies another day during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me;  and with tomorrow begins another.  Why am I allowed two?"

 

 

 

JESUS' SOURCE OF STRENGTH ..... prayer

 

THE NEED TO DRAW STRENGTH ... like Jesus ... FROM PRAYER:

 

Our adult years are a marathon, not a sprint, and so it is difficult to sustain graciousness, generosity, and patience through the tiredness, trials, and temptations that beset us through those years.   All  on our own, relying on willpower alone, we too often fatigue, get worn down, and compromise both our maturity and our discipleship.   We need help from beyond, from somewhere even beyond the human supports that help bolster us.   We need God's help,  strength from something beyond what is human.   We need prayer.

 

The first disciples of Jesus already realized this.  They looked at Jesus and sensed that he drew his real strength and his power from a source beyond himself.   Nowhere is this more evident than in the Gospel of Luke.   In his gospel there are more descriptions of Jesus in prayer than in all the other Gospels combined.   Luke gives us glimpses of Jesus praying in virtually every kind of situation:  he prays when he is joy filled;  he prays when he is in agony;   he prays with others around him;  he prays when he is alone at night, withdrawn from all human contact.  He pays high on a mountain,  on a sacred place, and he prays on the level plane, where ordinary life happens.  In Luke's Gospel,  Jesus prays a lot.   

 

And the lesson is not lost on his disciples.   The sense that Jesus' real depth and power are drawn from his prayer.  They know that what makes him so special, so unlike any other religious figure, is that he is linked at some deep place to a power outside of this world.   And they want this for themselves.  That is why they approach him and ask him:   "Lord, teach us to pray!"

 

 

(excerpt taken from SACRED FIRE by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser,  p. 169-170))

TAKING TIME FOR PRAYER

HAPPY EASTER (view of altar in chapel)

 

THE  DIFFERENCE   ( a poem by Grace L. Naessens)

 

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;

I had so much to accomplish,  I didn't have time to pray.

 

Problems just tumbled about me and grew heavier with each task;

Why doesn't God help me, I wondered; He answered:  "You didn't ask."

 

I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;

I wondered why God didn't show me -- He said,  "But you didn't seek."

 

I tried to come into God's presence;  I used all my keys at the lock;

God gently and lovingly chided,  "My child,  you didn't knock."

 

I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day;

I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.

 

 

 

 

HAPPY EASTER

(our Easter chapel)

 

from your Franciscan friars at the House of Prayer in Ava, MO,  a very BLESSED EASTER.  

 

May this season of 50 days bring many experiences of the Risen Lord into your life and into our Church and world!

 

Thomas Merton and prayer

SIMPLY MERTON: Wisdom from His Journals

 

(2015 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous Trappist, Thomas Merton.  The following excerpt is from this new book named above that was just published on Thomas Merton by Linus Mundy.)

 

 

It seems an understatement, and rather trite to say it, but Merton believed in the power of prayer.   He believed, along with thousands, if not millions of others, that prayer can bring benefits of healing,  transformation,  grace, conversion, and perhaps even freedom from want itself.   He firmly believed, as do many, that when individuals pray, when families and communities pray,  God answers those prayers in a loving manner.   On numerous occasions he expresses the sentiment that if it were not for the fervent prayers of whole communities -- like the Trappists,  the Franciscans,  large communities of sisters and brothers and priests,  and small ones as well -- the world would slip off into the realm of darkness and despair and ruin.

 

In a letter he wrote to Sufi scholar, Ch. Abdul Aziz,  Merton described his method of contemplation:  "It is not 'thinking about' anything, but a direct seeking of the face of the invisible, which cannot be found unless we become lost in him who is invisible."

 

He realized in his later years especially that contemplation was about self-emptying and freedom from self-awareness.  This was the path to an infinite relationship with God.

 

We make the whole thing too complicated, he keeps implying:    "It's a risky thing to pray, and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us.  The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God.  If saying your prayers is an obstacle to prayer,  cut it out.  Let Jesus pray.   Thank God Jesus is praying.  Forget yourself.  Enter into the prayer of Jesus.  Let him pray in you.   (The 'Jesus Prayer' is the best way to forget that you are praying.  But don't take away from weak people the crutches they need.)    The best way to pray is:   stop.   Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not ..."

 

 

PRAYERS for our NEW BISHOP CHERI

On Monday,  March 23rd,  Fr. Fernand Cheri,  III,  OFM,  a member of the Sacred Heart Province (one of the sponsoring provinces of our House of Prayer here), was ordained a bishop at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, LA.    He will serve as the new auxiliary bishop for the archdiocese of New Orleans.    We congratulate our brother and ask God to bless him in his new ministry.

 

Bishop Ferd,  may God bless you in your new ministry with every heavenly blessing and keep you holy and pure in his sight.  May he shower you with the riches of his glory, instruct you with the word of truth, form your heart with the Gospel of salvation and enrich you with love for all of God's people you have been chosen to serve.  

 

May God bless you and always keep you under his watchful care and protection!

 

 

THE CROSS -- something to pray with

(a cross in the cottage)

 

(This reflection is by Fr. S. Joseph Krempa, and appears in his DAILY HOMILIES for the season of Lent,  pp.97-98)

 

On the cross it all comes together.   The cross is perhaps the central devotion of Christian spirituality.   If we could point to any one symbol that captures everything Jesus was and is,  everything He said and did, it would be the crucifix.  The cross contains all kinds of meanings.  It says a great deal about mankind and about God;  it says a great deal about love and hate;  it says much about sin and about grace.  It is as though all the parables, healings and discourses of the Lord imploded into the cross and Christian thinkers have spent centuries drawing that meaning out.   We bring our own meanings to the cross as well.  It is the one constant in our lives from the time we were children.  It is no surprise that the crucifix has a central place in all Christian churches.   Like the bronze serpent which Moses raised in the desert, it is at once a symbol and an instrument of healing.   Generations of Christians have looked to the cross as the most dramatic and profound symbol of the meaning of Christ.  It freezes the moment of death, of human excess and, as John's Gospel emphasizes, the moment of new life as Jesus hands over the Spirit. 

 

In prayer, we can take some time during Lent to exercise our spiritual sight and look at our lives in the light of the cross.  It is the perfect image of God's love and of the reach of human love as well.

 

 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY -- a prayer

St Patrick's Breastplate

Christ be with me, Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me
Christ beside me, Christ to win me
Christ to comfort me and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger
Christ in hearts of all that love me
Christ in mouth of friend or stranger.

 

TRANSFORMING PRAYER

(a view of the Colorado Rockies)

 

TRANSFORMING PRAYER -- esp.  'Dryness'

 

One thing I have learned about prayer is that if you remain faithful to it,  the day will come when it becomes not just dry, but even distasteful.  Moments of consolation are replaced by boredom, and a half-hour prayer session seems like an eternity.  Through the ages the giants of prayer have reassured us that as long as we have remained faithful to the practice of prayer,  this is a normal step in the spiritual journey and must simply be lived through.

 

I may not like it, yet when I consider the fruit of this experience through the eyes of faith,  I can see that even this dryness is a strange and wonderful gift.   I might want to control every aspect of my spiritual journey and my ego may desire what feels like success in prayer, but God is interested in the total transformation of my heart and mind.

 

(This reflection, written by Terri Mifek,  appeared in the daily devotional,  LIVING FAITH, for Sunday, March 15th.)

 

 

 

POSTULANTS VISIT

On the weekend of March 1st,  our Interprovincial Prayer Fraternity was pleased to welcome the current group of postulants from St. John the Baptist Province (headquartered in Cincinnati, OH).

 

They spent two days with us, but almost longer as snow and ice and our uphill driveway just about made their leaving on Sunday impossible.  But a lot of effort and help from a local man with a snowplow prevailed and they were able to leave early Sunday afternoon.

 

Please pray for these men as they discern God's call in their lives, esp. the call to become a Franciscan.

 

PRAYER; ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

 

Some further thoughts on PRAYER, from reflections on Matthew 7; 7-12, the Gospel for Thursday of 1st Week in Lent.  

 

 

"Ask and it will be given to you ..."  (Mt 7:7)   This passage can be extremely unsettling when we ask and do not receive what we ask for.  The promise seems to be clear.   But there are times when our prayers are not answered in the way we are asking, and very difficult things happen.   We seem to be handed a stone instead of bread, a snake instead of a fish.   If we would not do this to our children,  why would God do it to us?  We ask to be kept safe,  but we are broken open.  Only slowly have I realized that it has been in that breaking open that I have come closer to God.  It may not have been the bread I had asked for,  but it was the Bread of Life."      (Patricia Livingston in LIVING WITH CHRIST daily meditation for Feb. 26, 2015.)

 

 

"The sense of the Lord's words in the Greek language of the Gospel is to "keep on asking",  to "keep on knocking", and to "keep on praying".  This is not a recommendation to bombard heaven since the Lord told us not to rattle on and on in prayer.   Rather,  He asks us to keep the attitude of prayer so that we can recognize the answer when it comes in an unconventional guise.  Prayer attunes us to discern God's response in the events of our life.  Perhaps we limit the kind of response we expect God to give to our prayers.  When it is answered in a way different from what we expect,  we can fail to recognize it.  If we keep the attitude of prayer, we will find that the Father does answer us in His own way."   (Fr. S. Joseph Krempa in  DAILY HOMILIES  (Seasonal)  p. 69.)

 

 

"In the Gospel,  Jesus tells us in a number of ways that God always answers prayer.  The tone of Jesus' words is not one encouraging us to lay out in specific detail for what we are praying (e.g., the model, unit number, size, and color of something we want), but the tone is simply that we trust God.   We need confidence in God and confidence that God will do what is best for us whether it's what we pray for or not.  Possibly,  more prayer should be about asking to be in tune with God rather than asking for specific items which we think we absolutely need.   Prayer doesn't really change things around us like altering the laws of meteorology or physics;  it more likely changes us.    Only persistence in prayer and regular practice of prayer can teach us how life-changing prayer really is."    (Fr. Don Talafous in HOMILIES for Weekdays - Year I,  p. 35/36.)

 

 

MORE on the LORD'S PRAYER

 

Fr. Don Talafous, writing in HOMILIES for Weekdays,  offers us another reflection on prayer based on the Scriptures for Tuesday of the First Week of Lent:

 

How can God get a word in?

 

Perhaps we can let today's words from Jesus (Mt 6: 7-15),  helped by Isaiah (55:10-11), remind us that our prayer includes listening and not simply saying words.   At times we act in prayer to God in the same way as a person sitting nervously with a new acquaintance.   We feel we have to be saying something every minute;  we find little pauses in the conversation embarrassing.   How different it is with someone we know very well;  we can sit together, gazing at a fire or listening to music, without feeling that one of us has to be saying something every moment.   Jesus says that in prayer we shouldn't rattle on or multiply words.  Isn't it true that what our prayer lacks so often is just some space and silence which allow God actually to influence our minds and hearts?   The author of Isaiah says that the word of God is like rain or snow that softens the earth and makes it fertile, eventually bringing forth its crops.   True prayer is a dialogue and not merely a one-sided conversation dominated completely by us.   God's work in us requires that we leave God some opening, a chance to be heard.  In our world of so much noise and so little tolerance for silence,  it may be hard for us to learn to be quiet before God.  But it's definitely worth the effort.   In silence we may experience our minds wandering all over the place.  To minimize these distractions, it may help to take a phrase from the Gospel or one of the readings and keep coming back to those inspired words gently, while trying to focus our attention.   Silence and attentiveness can be learned.  This may be a helpful way to stay with what is going on at Mass, too;  coming back to some favorite phrase.  

 

 

PRAYER REFLECTION

(winter look at the Prayer Fraternity)

 

The Gospel for the Tuesday of the First Week of Lent is from Matthew 6:7-15 and is Jesus teaching about prayer;  offering in that teaching the words of the OUR FATHER.  Fr. S. Joseph Krempa in his DAILY HOMILIES reflection for today has some important things on prayer for us to consider:

 

The Lord gives the disciples an example of how they are to pray:   with economy, trust and intimacy with God.   Like making love,  prayer is one of the things we all have to do on our own.  Nobody can do it for us.  Speaking with God is an intensely personal event.  

 

There are two extremes that make prayer difficult.   The first confuses prayer with our daily routine.  Prayerful living is not identical with prayer.  If getting through the day is the extent of our prayer life,  prayer loses its distinctive character.  The opposite extreme identifies prayer exclusively with surges of mysticism.  A rapid pulse and wild transports of spiritual passion are not attractive to many people.   There must be a middle ground between the two.   This is what the Lord describes.

 

We should have a set time for personal prayer.   In addition to our regular prayers, we should find a time when we are most at ease to simply communicate with the Lord and not be interrupted by anything else.   Some people even set aside a place of prayer in their homes.   Secondly,  our prayer should be authentic.   There is no need for us to posture before God or recite prayers written by a great saint which we think God will like to hear.  Thirdly,  we should await the Lord's response.   After a while,   we will not be greeted by silence.   We will slowly tune in to the Holy Spirit.

 

An important meaning of the Lord's Prayer is that we can contact the God of the universe.   Reading a great deal about prayer is not initially helpful.   Like teaching,  litigating,  preaching, driving or swimming,  we have to start at some point and will improve slowly.   After several months of experience,  books will be more helpful.  

 

Through prayer, we locate the still point inside ourselves.   When we locate that point,  there we will find the Spirit of Christ. 

 

 

LENTEN REFLECTION for prayer

 

 

wof@wordonfire.org

 

If you would like to add a daily Lenten reflection to your prayer,  there is a very good one available online from Fr. Robert Barron,  a priest from the Archdiocese of Chicago who teaches at their major seminary in Mundelein.   You can access it from that website given above.

 

the Concord Pastor TWO-WORD PRAYERS

This item is always on my sidebar.  I'm bringing it front and center to highlight its possibility for our prayer this Lent.  You'll see that each triad of two-word prayers is thematic. You might make the whole piece a part of your prayer or choose just one triad to pray repetitively as a mantra.  Sometimes the simplest prayers are the best prayers...

Calm me, quiet me, settle me... 

Steady me, balance me, ground me... 

Plant me, root me, embed me...

Support me, sustain me, protect me...

Forgive me, pardon me, free me...

Refresh me, restore me, heal me...

Enfold me, embrace me, hold me... 

     Lord, hear my prayer today!

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(Fr. Austin Fleming is a priest from Boston (Concord really) who writes a wonderful daily blog that is available for free;  above is a recent TWO WORD PRAYERS that he blogged;  you can access this and sign up to get it daily by goggling "Concord Pastor" and follow the prompts.)

 

 

Thomas Merton and prayer

 

On January 31st,  Thomas Merton  (the Gethsemani Trappist monk,  Fr. Louis) would have celebrated his 100th birthday.  We will be hearing many things about Merton this year.  There are many resources out there about Merton,  books that he wrote,  articles and poems and photos,  even copies of lectures that he gave that have been reproduced. on CDs.     

 

Here is a taste of Merton from his autobiography,  THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN,  as he writes about his first experience of prayer;  this is well before his conversion and subsequent baptism:

 

I was in my room.   It was night.  The light was on.  Suddenly it seemed to me that Father  (his dad),  who had now been dead more than a year, was  there with me.  The sense of his presence was as vivid and as real and as startling as if he had touched my arm or spoken to me.  The whole thing passed in a flash, but in that flash, instantly,  I was overwhelmed with a sudden and profound insight into the misery and corruption of my own soul, and I was pierced deeply with a light that made me realize something of the condition I was in, and I was filled with horror at what I saw, and my whole being rose up in revolt against what was within me, and my soul desired escape and liberation and freedom from all this with an intensity and an urgency unlike anything I had ever known before.   And now I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray  --  praying not with my lips and with my intellect and my imagination, but praying out of the very roots of my life and of my being, and praying to the God I had never known, to reach down towards me out of His darkness and to help me to get free of the thousand terrible things that held my  will in their slavery.  

 

There were a lot of tears connected with this, and they did me good, and all the while, although I had lost that first vivid, agonizing sense of the presence of my father in the room,  I had him in my mind, and I was talking to him as well as to God, as though he were a sort of intermediary ....

 

The one thing that seems to me morally certain is that this was really a grace, and a great grace.  If I had only followed it through, my life might have been very different and much less miserable for the years that were to come.

 

Before now I have never prayed in the churches I had visited.   But I remember the  morning that followed this experience.  I remember how I climbed the deserted Aventine  (he was in Rome at the time), in the spring sun, with my soul broken up with contrition, but broken and clean, painful but sanitary like a lanced abscess,  like a bone broken and re-set.  .....  And it was a very definite experience, a conversion, not without struggle, even now, to walk deliberately in the church with no other purpose than to kneel down and pray to God.   Ordinarily,  I never knelt in these churches, and never paid any formal or official attention to Whose house it was.  But now I took holy water at the door and went straight up to the altar rail and knelt down and said, slowly, with all the belief I had in me,  the Our Father.

 

It seems almost unbelievable to me that I did no more than this, for the memory remains in me as that of such an experience that it would seem to have implied at least a half house of impassioned prayer and tears.   The thing to remember is that I had not prayed at all for many years.    .....

 

However, I prayed, then I looked about the church, and went into a room where there was a picture by Sassoferrato, and stuck my face out a door into a tiny, simple cloister, where the sun shone down on an orange tree.  After that I walked out into the open feeling as if I had been reborn, and crossed the street, and strolled through the suburban fields to another deserted church, where I did not pray, being scared by some carpenters and scaffolding.   I sat outside, in the sun, on a wall and tasted the joy of my own inner peace and turn over in my mind how my life was now going to change, and how I would become better.

 

(This excerpt appears on pages 111-113 of the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1948 paperback copy of  THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN.)

 

 

 

 

 

WISHING YOU A BLESSED SEASON OF LENT

A BLESSED LENT TO YOU!   The friars here at your Ava Franciscan Prayer Fraternity wish you and yours a "Joyful Lent",  as one of our prayers at the Ash Wednesday Mass today suggests.   Fr. S. Joseph Krempa in his DAILY HOMILIES reflection for today offers us more to reflect and pray with:

 

 

The word "Lent" comes from an Old English word for "Springtime"  --  a season when new life is wrested from the clutch of winter.  Lent is our time for revival and renewal  -- the springtime of the spirit.

 

We have all been through enough Lents to realize that complete transformation probably will not occur.   But Lent is an opportunity for repair work in a specific area of our life that might need reconstruction.

 

Maybe you have doubts about the faith or questions about things we do as a Church.   Lent is a time to resolve the doubts and get some straight answers.

 

Maybe you have been carrying personal wounds that have been eating away at you.   Lent is a time to find ways to let the healing begin.

 

Maybe your spiritual life is stuck in neutral and you want to be able to pray as easily and spontaneously as Jesus did.  Lent is a time to start to experience prayer. 

 

Each of us has some part of our life that needs a lift and some remodeling.   Lent is less a time for pain and punishment than it is a time for healing...Lent is not a time for temporary improvement until Easter after which we go back to business as usual.  Its purpose is to make a lasting change in our life.

 

 

The Meaning of Prayer

THE MEANING OF PRAYER

              by    Frances McKinnon Morton

 

A breath of prayer in the morning

   Means a day of blessing sure;

A breath of prayer in the evening

   Means a night of rest secure.

 

A breath of prayer in our weakness

   Means a clasp of a mighty hand;

A breath of prayer when we're lonely

   Means Someone to understand.

 

A breath of prayer in our sorrows

   Means comfort and peace and rest;

A breath of prayer in our doubtings

   Assures us the Lord knows best.

 

A breath of prayer in rejoicing

   Gives joy and added delight,

For they that remember God's goodness

   Go singing far into the night.

 

There's never a year nor a season

   That prayer may not bless every hour,

And never a soul need be helpless

   When linked with God's infinite power.

 

(This came from an old little booklet entitled BESIDE STILL WATERS:  Prayers, Poems and Inspiration Thoughts,  published by Baxter Lane Company from Amarillo, TX -- copyrighted in 1975.)

 

A THOUGHT ON PRAYER

(the cottage's chapel)

 

More things are wrought by PRAYER that this world dreams of,  wherefore,  let your voice rise like a foundation day and night.

                                                       -- Tennyson

Saying Farewell to Christmas 2014

 

Before we say farewell to the 2014 Christmas season with next Sunday's Baptism of our Lord,  let us share with you these several pictures taken in our chapel.  

 

Morning and Evening is especially lovely with the Christmas lights providing all one needs to pray,  allowing God to speak in the silence and in the Christmas beauty. 

 

Our Nativity scene this year are figurines from Mexico.

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015

 

As we begin 2015,  we, the friars here at the Franciscan Interprovincial Prayer Fraternity, wish you,  and your loved ones, a Year of Blessing,   a Year of Needed Graces,  a Year filled with Joyful Memories of past moments and many new ones.

 

We pray that you receive grace as needed to deal with adversity,  with loss,  with any crosses that life may bring to you.

 

We pray that prayer,  Church,  sacraments, community, silence, solitude, family,  friends and, most especially, God,  will be an abundant part of this New Year in 2015.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!