We stepped into this year as one steps out onto a vast, snowy plain: not a mark, not a track, all pure white. Yet now, as we look back, we see that we have laid down many, many crooked paths. For this we must repent before God, but repent with purpose. We should not only be sorry for what went wrong, but, having learned from it, go into the new year with a surer wisdom and a clearer sight.
And yet, beside the failures, what light, what goodness the past year has held! How much kindness we have received from others, how much God Himself has done for us! And before we cross the threshold of the new year, let us give thanks both to God and to people, through whom so much brightness and warmth came into our lives. In the end, the true harvest of life is love and thanks, gladness and lowliness. Let us gather up from the year now ending all the thankfulness we can find in it — thankfulness for good and kindly people who were merciful to us, and thankfulness to God — and with this store let us enter the new year.
Once again the coming year spreads out before us: a clean page, a field of open promise. Let us breathe hope into it and set out to walk the straight way of the covenant that lights all the days ahead. Let us walk together in friendship, boldly, steadily. Hard days will meet us, and bright ones too; both come from the Lord. The dark, bitter hours He gives so that we may pour light, gladness and peace into them; the bright ones, so that we may share in the light and, as Scripture says, "walk as children of light." Let us walk side by side, care for each other, leave no one behind. Then, when the year ends and we look back, we shall trace a clear line; no one will lie by the roadside, no one be forgotten, no one lose out. Through us, in our small parish, love, light and joy will stand in the world. Amen.
Sermon by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom)
London parish, 31 December 1973
Source: The Foundation "Spiritual Heritage of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh"
