What might the new year bring?

At the beginning of a new year, it’s impossible to predict the dominant headlines and impactful stories that will shape our lives in 2022. What will be the events that affect our families, our Church, our nation and world? What events will challenge or perhaps renew our faith? 

Will the events of 2021 still be impacting our lives by the end of this year? Probably so. We witnessed how unexpectedly COVID-19 suddenly came on the scene in 2020 and remains with us still, with such far-reaching effects and devastating consequences. 

We have been surprised, perhaps, how even beyond its health impacts, the pandemic has brought to light latent social, political and economic fissures that remained unacknowledged or unresolved for such a long time. We continue to experience the bitter fruits of racial injustice and religious intolerance, which erupt periodically into violence around the globe and even close to home. 

We have seen how the massive migration of peoples, often as the result of famine, war or economic pressures, changes the complexion and makeup of nations and cultures, including our own. Environmental degradation and its impact on climate and the poor are very much raising the consciousness of many in our world, especially among the young. What will this year bring?

One of the stories that likely will have far-reaching consequences this year will be the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that is expected this Spring. It is a case that has energized pro-life advocates more than any pending Supreme Court decision in the past 49 years. If upheld, the Dobbs case would allow states to impose strict limits on abortion, if not undermine its very foundation in federal law. 

Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the abortion of unborn children in the United States has been legal with few limitations up to the very moment of birth. In terms of loss of life, alone, the consequences of Roe v. Wade have been devastating. More than 60,000,000 children have been killed through surgical abortions in the United States, and an unknown number have been lost through pharmaceutical abortion procedures. 

What an unimaginable impoverishment of the human family to lose so many lives and so much human potential! Additionally, the very real emotional and spiritual impact on women and families affected by abortion can never be calculated. Abortion always is a tragedy, for both the child and the mother. We have an obligation to support and accompany both.

While abortion is certainly not the only life issue about which we are concerned, it remains the pre-eminent human rights and justice issue for Catholics. It is an egregious assault on human dignity because it attacks the most innocent and vulnerable among us. Without a right to life all other rights are built on sand. 

Now is the time for us to pray ardently for our Supreme Court justices, and for each of us to recommit ourselves to the protection and promotion of every human life from conception to natural death, for mother and child, for families, for the condemned and the incarcerated, the trafficked and the immigrant, the aged and abandoned. 

Amid the uncertainty and turmoil in which we find ourselves at the beginning of this new year, it is good to remember that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He is the Lord of history. And he is not aloof from our sufferings, hopes and aspirations. 

The just completed Christmas season proclaims that God is with us. The Word became flesh to dwell among us. By his saving mission, Jesus, the image of the Invisible God, came to reconcile us to one another and to the Father. He did this by offering his life for us, conquering death and rising victorious over sin and its consequences. He sent his Holy Spirit to continue his saving mission in the world through the Church. He is the Lord of life.