Tuesday, January 1(14), 2025
Civil New Year’s Day. The Circumcision of the Lord.
Commemoration of St. Basil the Great.
2Tim. 4:5-8; Mk. 1:1-8                                 

Since the New Year's Day is the first day of the coming year, it is the right time for setting such resolutions, thoughts and feelings in our souls which would govern our whole life throughout the year and keep it on a Christian course.  This can be readily done by perceiving a New Year’s Day in spirit ─ that is, a moment when someone who thus far has been living in carelessness changes his mind and becomes keenly concerned with his salvation and godliness.  When such a decision is taken, then everything is made over, both inside and outside, everything is set up upon new principles: it is a completely new beginning.  If this is familiar to you, seek to renew that experience; otherwise strive to gain it ─ and you will have a genuine New Year’s Day.

Celebrations of the Circumcision of the Lord and of St. Basil’s  memory are a good match for this day.  Indeed, as we said, at the moment of the radical change a man decides to live exclusively for God, seeking salvation, ─ while before that he lived exclusively for himself, moving towards his own doom.  At this moment he quits his old habits and attachments, cuts off his sinful pleasures, his lusts and passions, and takes on the hard work of self-denial.  And that is precisely what the Apostle means by “the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ”  [Col. 2:11] ─ which we are reminded of and called to by today’s celebration of the Circumcision of the Lord.  And a living example of that is given to us in the person of St. Basil the Great, a forth century bishop, an outstanding Christian author and a staunch defender of the true faith from heresies who fully committed his short life to Jesus Christ and His Holy Church.

Thus, all items which fill our mind on the New Year’s Day converge on one particular subject ─ our inner renewal through the circumcision of the heart.  If, by the grace of the Lord, you can set yourself up not only to think about it, but also introduce it into your real life, then you will have the most perfect celebration of the New Year’s Day as a true Christian and get ready to live a Christian life throughout the whole coming year.  For the next New Year’s Day you will have to just renew and revive your present resolution.

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