[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! On this day, people all over the world are wishing each other a Happy New Year. It is worth reflecting on what the content of this wish really is, what desire is expressed in this wish, "Happy New Year". Probably this wish is similar to the one expressed in the beautiful old Hungarian greeting, "May God give you wine, wheat and peace in abundance!" Yes, because our human evaluation of the year is that it brings success, prosperity and a peaceful life. It is undoubtedly a great thing to have all this, but if He does not grant us such wishes, we are again as unhappy as we were anyway. I think that somehow we need more to make our new year truly happier. I see happiness in being able to say yes to life in all situations, to accept life as God gives it. To be happy is somehow to accept life with its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its light and shadows, everything as it is, to love it, to say blessings on it, to find blessings in it. So this happiness means not being happy on the outside, but being happy on the inside - it means an inner orderliness, perhaps I should say: being in tune with the eternal order, with the eternal will of God. Therefore, I wish all of you who are here a very happy New Year by engraving on your hearts and lips a very simple, short little prayer, the one I have just read from the Bible. Could there be a happier wish for the New Year than this prayer, "Lord, show us, the stumbling wanderers on earth, your way, that we may not get lost, that we may not stumble in the mazes of the new year, which is about to dawn."You know, this is a useful little prayer, if we take it seriously. Let's try to take it seriously! But if we take it seriously, let's take it literally, as the Word of God puts it on our lips. Because I didn't shape it - it's in the Word of God, and it says, 'Your ways, Lord, make known to me, teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me..." Do you see what this is about? It's not about showing me my way - it's not about ways and means of my own choosing - it's about God's ways, God's paths. I want to emphasize very much how stubborn we are in choosing the paths of our lives: Though we have experienced many times that we have gotten into trouble, yet the next time we start over, we again choose the path of our own choosing. Again, we find ourselves at a dead end, and in despair we even blame God, reproaching him, saying, "Well, we've come to this". But at the beginning of the journey we did not even think to ask for his advice, we did not seek his ways. Anyone who truly desires in his heart not to go astray must first of all reckon with the great truth: that God's ways are very often different from our ways. God's ways are very often not the same as our thoughts. Let us not try to guess what this new year will bring. Let us not strain to keep secrets, let us not worry in advance about things which God has reserved for Himself anyway. Especially let us not expect God to think out all the details of our beautifully planned paths, and then to adapt His power and help to what our heart's desire imagines and desires. But yes, let us anticipate that in this new year, not everything will be as we would like it to be. God is warning us in advance that He may pull through our dreams, our desires, our heart's desire. Imagine: if God were to favour us according to our thoughts, we would soon be walking down the wide road to hell - either hell on earth or hell in damnation. For our hearts are very, very wicked things, and they can lead him into a great deal of trouble who gives way to them without restraint. God wants to give us something better, much more than our hearts desire. So let us first of all note very well that in this little prayer it is not a question of "show me my ways and help me to go on", but specifically of "show me your ways, your paths, lead me in them, for I want to walk in them in the new year".
This is a humble bow before the mighty God, which is perhaps the most difficult thing for man to do. And yet this is where the whole life of faith begins, the willing acceptance of a God who knows better than I do, not to do as I will, but as He wills. We must also see very clearly that God does not usually reveal His ways to us in advance in their full length and breadth, always in small details. He lets us know where the path He wants to lead us is leading us, where it is leading us, and what the final goal is: eternal glory. But the stages of this path are revealed to us almost step by step. Somewhat as, in the darkness, as I walk along the narrow path, he who knows the way well, goes before me, shines his lantern well, lights the way before my feet. It's very good for feeling, for spotting the gap, for avoiding the things I might stumble over, the dangers of going wrong, and knowing for sure that I'm moving forward towards my goal. But each twist and turn of that road only becomes apparent when you get there. The pages of our lives are sealed, only from time to time does God unseal them. Even the next hour is a secret, let alone a whole year to come. We cannot see whether He is preparing a Christmas tree or a funeral headstone for one of us, whether He is going to visit one of us with great joy or great sorrow and misery. But how much love there is in this covering of the future! For imagine if we could foresee now all the ways of the year 1968: there would be those who would flee in terror to suicide, and perhaps there would be those who, seeing the successes and prosperity that await them, would sink into still greater idleness. This is how God keeps us humble, and how we truly feel at every moment how dependent we are on His grace. That is why Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will worry about its own things. Every day is enough for its own troubles." Whoever worries about tomorrow today, adds to the burden of today the burden of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and should not be surprised if he collapses under it.
God always gives everyone the strength to carry the burden of the day. But if he does, dare you trust yourself to his guidance, step by step, in his ways? For if you do, do not fear the mystery, do not be afraid of the darkness, you will not get lost, you will always know - if nothing else - the next step. And is not this enough for a weary wanderer on his way home?
"Guide me in your righteousness, for you are my God of salvation, I wait for you every day." Guide me, teach me! This guidance, this teaching, is necessary for every believer, if only to be able to behave in the most varied situations of life as a believer - a child of God - should behave, worthy of God's grace. For it is indeed necessary to have guidance from above in order to be able to find the right attitude and to behave as one ought in difficult situations, under the crushing burdens of life, in the midst of temptations, in distressing need. It takes guidance from above, divine teaching, for one to be able to say always what is necessary, among friends and enemies. And in the thousands of minor and major decisions of life, he can weigh and decide correctly, and always find the right way out of the many labyrinths he gets himself into, and from a certain higher perspective - almost from God's perspective - he can see and appreciate the depths and heights through which his path leads him. So what we need is guidance, a teaching that not only always shows us the next step, but also gives us the strength to take that step. Therefore, "Guide me Lord, teach me Lord again and again". Sigh, "Lead me Lord, teach me Lord." And listen to the leading, the teaching, and you will receive, and so you will always find the opportunity that the victory won for us in the most diverse situations of life through the death and resurrection of Jesus means for us. Lead, teach! This includes the fact that we are unable to walk in the ways of the Lord on our own. You heard what I read from Romans 12, how we should love and relate to one another, how we should be tolerant, joyful, gentle, etc. - we are incapable of it. No matter how much one has experienced, no matter how much one has learned by example, no matter how much one has seen of this life, no matter how much one has learned by example, no matter how much one has seen of this life, all of this is not enough without this guidance, and one is always going astray again. Have you not noticed how uncertain we can be many times, how many times we miss the mark, how many times we miss the mark, how perplexed and perplexed we can stand over the wounds of our own lives and the lives of others? How many times do we say - or even admit, if we are ashamed to admit it - how many times do we feel: "Oh, I shouldn't have said it like that!" Or when we feel ashamed, defeated and despairing in such and such a situation - and it shouldn't be so! Because the death and resurrection of Jesus means that God wants to intervene in our lives, wants to transform us, wants to make us different people, wants to give us new life. But let us not think that the whole redemption is just to make up at the end of our lives for all that we have done wrong. Like in the fairy tale, where everything turns out right in the end. Jesus did not die and rise again so that we might one day die happy, but so that we might live happy, happy lives, in harmony with the eternal order, in harmony with God's eternal will. So dare to pray calmly, courageously, again and again. Lord, here I am, I'm in the maze of life, I don't know what to do, I don't see a way out, I don't want to follow my own way, I don't want to decide according to my own way - You guide me. You lead, teach me!
For there is nothing to be ashamed of in confessing to God one's inadequacy, one's perplexity, one's groping in the dark. Indeed, I wish we could all humble ourselves so much that, after such a failure, we could make a real plea, "Guide me, Lord, teach me!" God is leading us on many paths in this new year. It may be that one of us here will be given the road to success, prosperity, ascension - happiness in the earthly sense - it may be, but be very careful, for it is on this road that one can most quickly go astray, most alarmingly off the Lord's path! If the road leads here, here is where you really ask, "Guide and teach me, Lord!" For I have seen one: fortune came pouring down on him, everything was his - he could not help being happy, he was ambitious, he was filled with dissatisfaction, insatiability, he wanted to win the whole world. He did not even notice that he had lost his own soul, he was unhappy in his great happiness. The sufferer who has found the meaning of suffering is happier than the happy one who does not know what happiness is for. Indeed, it needs divine guidance and divine teaching to enlighten one to the meaning of one's own happiness: that it is a mission to make the unhappy happy! It may be that one's path in the coming year will be overshadowed by heavy sufferings, but if you can - you can - accept that this is God's path for you, even the darkest shadows will be illuminated, there will no longer be loss, but miraculously gain, spiritual enrichment and upliftment.
Crumbling under burdens, never ask: Why, Lord? - if not always say: "Lead, Lord! Teach, Lord! And then you will not collapse, and the sooner you will know that in every suffering, in every affliction, God has hidden for you some great blessing, some great gift. In the grey mists of the future, the path of one of our lives may turn into the dark valley of death. It is very likely that this is where we would get most lost, where we would get into the greatest trouble, if there were not someone to guide us, to show us the way through death, into eternity. And so the scariest maze can be the happiest path: arrival in eternity. For the death and resurrection of Jesus illuminates this very path, the most glorious one, the one that leads from earth to heaven.
Jesus says: "I am the way..." He is the Jesus who goes before us, the Jesus who has walked every corner of this earthly life, and who alone in this earthly maze truly knows the ways of the Lord. And the little lamp with which He shines at our feet is His word to us, His holy word, the living Word with which He guides, teaches, shows the way and gives us strength. So study it more fervently, more devotedly, so that in this year your life may be truly in harmony with the eternal order: the will of God. May this new year be for all of us a blessed year of much more serious and thorough reading and study of the Word!
Let us start this year with this little prayer: "Make known to me, O Lord, your ways, teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are my God of salvation, I wait for you every day."
Yes, every day! He who truly waits for the Lord and His guidance every day, will surely have a blessed and happy New Year!
Amen.
"Just guide me, Lord, and hold my hand,
Till I reach my destination with joy,
For without you my strength is so little,
But where you go before me, there is no fear.
With your holy mercy, cover my heart,
In joy and sorrow make me silent,
That your child may rest at your feet,
Who, closing his eyes, follows thee faithfully.
Though my weakness should not touch it:
Out of blind obscurity you point to heaven;
Only lead me, Lord, all the way, and take my hand,
Till I come to my happy goal."
(Canticle 462)
Date: 1 January 1968 New Year