New Year. The Circumcision of the Lord. St Basil the Great (Col. 2:8–12; Lk. 2:20–21, 40–52)

Since the new year is the beginning of the days of the year, on this day we ought to gather into our souls such thoughts, feelings, and dispositions as could worthily guide a Christian through the whole course of his affairs during the coming year. We will find these at once as soon as we consider what a new year means in the spiritual life. In the spiritual life, a new year begins when someone who has been living in negligence starts to strive earnestly for salvation and for pleasing God. For when a person resolves upon this, everything within him and around him is rebuilt anew and on new foundations—the old passes away and all things become new. If you already have this, renew it; and if you do not, bring it about—and you will have a new year.

This same thought connects fittingly with the worthy celebration of the Circumcision of the Lord and the feast of St Basil the Great. The essence of the transformation just described is that a person begins from that moment to live solely for God and for his own salvation, whereas before he lived exclusively for himself, preparing his own ruin. At that point he abandons his former habits, all his pleasures, and everything in which he found enjoyment; he cuts off his passions and sensual inclinations and takes up the works of strict self-denial. And such a transformation corresponds exactly to what the Apostle says circumcision of the heart should be—the circumcision of the heart to which the feast of the Lord’s Circumcision calls us and which it obliges us to perform, and of which St Basil the Great is himself a living example. Thus all the themes that press upon our consciousness at the new year converge in one thing—our inner renewal through circumcision of the heart. If the Lord grants someone to be disposed in this way at the new year—that is, not merely to think about it but actually to bring all of it into his life—that person will celebrate the New Year in the most perfect Christian manner and will have prepared himself for a Christian conduct of the whole year. At the next new year, he will need only to renew and revive what he received today.