The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1923. THE END OF THE YEAR

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 52, 27 December 1923, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1923. THE END OF THE YEAR

iffijftjSh HE end of the year is a time of retrospection. M IjjM We look back on the days that have gone and .!» I! JL ourselves what have they left us. Wo ,Xg*ggffi compare the record of achievement with the x\ promises of twelve months ago. We note our MjffiJ® slight gains and our heavy loses. For, &* weighed against the gains the losses aro usually heavy, when we consider the things that really matter. In many ways the whole world is poorer now than it was on New Year's Day, 1923. It has made no progress on the road to peace and good will among men; it has not drawn nearer to God; it is not purer, nobler, more just, more charitable. And how few individuals are in better case? We have lost friends in death; we have lost graces that will not come again; we • have lost time, that never can be recalled. And, against such losses what gains can we set down? Money? Honors? Position? Influence? These some of us may have secured, but what security of tenure for them do we hold? There is no pocket in a' shroud, says the old proverb; and therefore money does not really count. Honor is but a breath and it adds nothing to the man or woman who wears it. Influence is in itself an indifferent thing, and, ill-used, may be an evil thing. One hour of the past year rightly spent with a view to eternity would be worth all the temporal gains we could count; and probably there are few of us who can count any. * A year has gone. Most people lull themselves to oblivion of the true meaning of time, acting as if they were here for ever, or for a very long period, considering but little that time will end quickly for them, and that at its end eternity will begin. Time is short, and it passes as swiftly as a post. It flows by like the waters of the stream that descend towards the ocean: Labitur et labetur irreparable, tempus 1 It flows and flows for ever and can never be recalled. Yet, this fleeting thing called time is the material of which we must build our eternity. And it is all the more precious because it is so brief, because it is so irreparable. Hence, the important question to ask ourselves when we balance our accounts at the end of the year, is what use have we made of the time now gone by.

Do not complain that it has gone; complain only if you j have wasted it: if you used it rightly every day and v., every week of it will be recorded to your credit where | thieves do not enter and steal and where moth and rust A consume not. If you have wasted it, it will count against you: according to the way in which you have used it, , it will serve or injure you. Consider what a price the blessed in Heaven and the damned in Hell would pay for one year of time? How the former would make it add to their eternal glory; how the latter would use it in. penance and atonement for the sins of the years they wasted! Now and then something happens to make as realise what time means. Perhaps it is the death/of a friend that reminds us that soon for us, as for him now, time will be no more. Perhaps it is a grace that comes when wo are alone with our thoughts at some season like this. Perhaps it is some sudden vision of the realities of life which opens our eyes to the fact that we are already advanced a considerable way on the path which leads to the grave. Well for us if at such' a moment we seize the inspiration and make it the stepping-stone which it can become for us. Well for us if we learn in earnest to utilise the time we have, to act in the living present instead of praising the bygone past or trusting to the uncertain future. Probably a year ago we made resolutions concerning the right employment of time, determining that we were henceforth going to live each day as if we were to die each day, and to work each day as if we were working for eternity. And, alas, soon we were once more in the old groove, led astray by the fascination of nugacity, busy about idle things and indolent about important things; doing much that was really nothing because . we did little that we ought to have done. Too often it is on such a record we look back at the end of the year. * The stream of time rolls ever onward, hurrying towards the ocean of eternity. One day we shall cross the bar where time ends and eternity begins; and, then, there shall be no more time for us, no further opportunity of moulding our eternity, of making or marring it—for make it or mar it everyone of us is doing all the while that time is slipping past us. If we wish to understand clearly what time is worth we must try to understand clearly that the eternity into which we shall pass will be either Heaven or Hell. And if we want to find out now what have been our gains or losses for the year, we can decide very quickly by answering candidly for ourselves before God the question whether the year that is no more has brought us nearer to Heaven or to Hell. For it certainly has brought us much nearer to the one or to the other. To which? There can be no more profitable thought for a Christian at the end of the year. And, having thought it out sincerely, the next thing is to consider that there is still time left us, there is a year beginning, some of which at least we shall probably be able to use for better or worse, although we may never see the end of it—never see the beginning of the year 1925. Certainly very many of us shall never see it. Begin to use well what time is left; begin with the time that is at hand, with the day that has not yet ended. Let no more hours go by wasted; act in each as if there were to be no other following it: Lass ungebracuht die Stunde nicht veraehen, vielleicht will keine zweite dir beginnen; Lass ungebroehen keine Rose stehen, vielleicht musst vor die Rose du von hirmen. Seize, the hour that fleets so fast; one such hour will "be your last •'.'•■ ;< Pluck the roses while you pass; roses jade and flesh is grass. <Xm> _ The Press Apostolate Look around among your neighbors and see if there is a Catholic family not taking the Tablet. Do your part for the Apostolate of the Press by persuading them that it will make their Sundays happier if they read our paper. "