New year, new opportunities to both thank God for blessings & go to him in tough times

Dear Young Church:

As we begin this new year, I offer you not just a “Happy New Year,” but more importantly, “God’s blessings” as we begin 2022. May this be a year in which you will draw closer to Jesus, learn more about him and show his charity to others. 

The new year gives us an opportunity to start over. In so doing, we look to the past and give thanks to God for his many blessings and the ways in which we have been faith-filled disciples.

We learn from the ways in which we have followed Christ, but also from the ways in which we have not been the faith-filled disciples we should have been. Beginning a new year gives us an opportunity to look at those things, particularly, at those attitudes at school or at home that we want to change so that we can become more caring.

As this new year begins, please go to God in prayer and thank him for the many ways in which he has blessed you. All of us have challenges, struggles and even painful moments in life, and we go to God in those times as well.

But let us also not forget to thank God for the ways in which he shows his love to us, and the ways in which he calls us, every day, to follow his son, Jesus.

Wishing you God’s blessings, I am a brother in Christ,

Most Rev. Gregory M. Aymond
Archbishop of New Orleans