We just celebrated the lunar new year, in Chinese and Vietnamese culture. If you go to Chinatown, you might have seen bright red ribbons, firecrackers and dragons all around, and little paper envelopes hung on tree branches stuffed with money. People eat oranges for joy and noodles for long life in China, and in Vietnam they make special rice cakes filled with mung bean paste and pork. Having a sweet tooth, I like the candies most of all - hard milk candies, mung bean cakes, moon cakes filled with suet and egg yolks and taro and durian... trays filled with dried candied fruits: carrots, lotus stems and seeds, wintermelon, cherimoya, tamarind and ginger. All those delightful and strong smells of the food and relatives' perfume wafting through the air are nearly intoxicating.
That being said... it's a new year! With hopes for good health and prosperity, we start afresh. For me, this year is more new than any other has been. The previous statement might sound a bit odd, given that each year is new in its own right, but to me it is quite significant. Not only does the sun rise and set on a new day, one after the next, but I am surrounded by different people, new things, and the sometimes overwhelming prospect of saying goodbye. You'd think that maybe I'd have learned by now, how to say goodbye. Or perhaps it isn't so much the "saying goodbye" as it is never looking back. I'm conflicted over whether or not looking back is a good or bad practice - and which way will lead me to learning a valuable lesson. A little heartbreak and loss later, I'm seeing life in a different light. I pray that it will never be the "light" or lens of bitterness, though that cloud is hovering near.
This year, I want to be grateful in every circumstance for my numerous blessings and even the hardships themselves, valued for the lessons they will teach me and the strength they will prod me to discover. "For though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak," the Scripture teaches us. With each year that passes and is added to my age, am I growing in wisdom or foolishness? Am I becoming someone who cares for others or someone who is only concerned with myself? - in this examination, I look now to my daily life, my actions and see how they reflect my interior life better than any verbal description... and I find myself sadly lacking. But you know what? That's a good thing, in the sense that I can now point out specific areas for improvement and set realistic goals for rectifying my ignorance and neglect. "O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam, that gained for us so great a Redeemer!" proclaims the Exsultet sung at the Easter Vigil each year.
Now I pray:
"Thank you, Lord, for my littleness and my weakness. Allow me to glorify You now through my life and my personal conversion of heart! Thank you for allowing me to see all of my wrongs that I may make reparation for them. Give me a measure of Your intense sorrow for my sins, that I may firmly commit to changing my life and never again returning to those transgressions. Cover me with Your Precious Blood and purify me in the fire of Your Love! Then let me set fire to the whole world..."
Because life is far too short to die.
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