Stay with us!

[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! This is the story of two travellers, from which I have read this little passage. You may remember that on one of the first Easter days the disciples were on their way to Emmaus. It was with a heavy heart that they set out on the road, because the One whom their hearts loved, the One whom they looked up to with such unspeakable devotion and reverence as their Saviour and Lord, had died, and died very horribly, shamefully, crucified like a common villain. Then, suddenly, on the way, a mysterious third man, who only later turns out to be the risen Jesus Christ himself, joins them and begins to explain to them the necessity of his Passion and death. They listen with increasing interest to the discourse the mysterious stranger is explaining to them. They do not even realize that they have arrived in the village. Jesus pretends to want to go on, but they begin to plead, "Stay with us, for it is now evening and the sun is setting." And Jesus went in and stayed with them. That is the Easter story, and I feel that in it we find the most appropriate Word as we stand here on the last night of the Easter season and the threshold of the new year. We are also travellers. We never feel it as we do on the threshold of a new year. During the year we are always on the move, the burden of life takes us on many changing paths, but on this last night of the year we feel especially alive with the rush of time. We all take one decisive, big step at a time on the road to the final destination. When you are young, you do not feel the passage of time so painfully, but when you are halfway through life, or even beyond it, you begin to feel - more and more - how true this saying is: "We have no city to stay here, but we are looking for the future".Now, on the last night of the year, when the year has come to an end, the best thing we can do is to ask Jesus to stay with us, to come with us, not to leave us now, as we pass from the old year into the new. It has been a long, eventful year, and we have now reached its twilight. So many memories of all kinds of experiences and colourful events! Just think back: there have been sunny, sunny stretches of road, happy moments, the happy memory of which lights up our souls, but there have also been disappointments, losses, days of anxiety, perhaps even moments of despair, which have also sapped our strength. Lovers have found each other and prepared happily for the big day, happy parents have rejoiced at the arrival of perhaps their first child or grandchild. Houses were completed, new homes were built, the warmth of the family hearth was spreading. But alas, the bells of the cemeteries were often rung, when someone was escorted to his last journey with a sad heart! But how much we miss the one who has passed away this very year! Each of our individual lives was embedded in the history of political events. How many times did our hearts leap - remember? - at the sound of an alarming, worrying radio report: 'Oh, is there not some terrible world conflagration coming to consume everything?' It was evening, the sun was setting on 1963. A twelve-month period in the lives of us all has passed away beyond repair. What we missed during that time can hardly be made up for. The waste of our health, which was mainly due to our own excesses, will be hard to make up. The wounds we have inflicted on others will, oh, slowly, perhaps never heal! We are already asking, as the Emmaus wanderers asked, stretching out our hands to Jesus: stay with us, do not leave us now, come very close to us with your Spirit, with your help, otherwise we will be so overwhelmed by the flood of many, many painful thoughts and feelings that our hearts will not be able to bear it!
Dear Brothers and Sisters, the evening of this year reminds us of the evening of our whole life. Just as the river of time has carried us to the end of this year, it will carry us all to the end of our lives. The flow of the great river slows down more and more as it approaches its final destination, the flooding into the sea. The image of the flow of our lives is felt in reverse: the child is still dreaming in happy timelessness among his toys, oblivious to the passing of time. How long the couple feels the waiting time of a few months! And then, suddenly, one is alarmed to notice that time is rushing by. But it would be nice to stop for a moment now and then, or to turn back for a few moments! The years go by at an ever faster pace, especially when the obituary comes: he died tragically - we read the sad news. What happened to him? He set off in the morning with happy plans, stepped off the tram the wrong way and got under the wheels, or was walking calmly down the street, when suddenly he collapsed because his heart stopped. Is that all life is? Is death lurking at every moment? There are five hundred of us here in this church, none of us can tell if we will live to see New Year's Eve. Not one of us could tell which of us would be the first for whom New Year's Eve would bring the last night of life. Can we have a more urgent plea than those of the two wanderers in Emmaus: Lord, stay with me, for it will soon be evening, stay with me, let me take hold of Life in You, the Life that will never pass away before the sun goes down and the night comes, when no one works anymore!
Dear Brothers and Sisters, without exception, every human being usually feels in some way that there is something poignant in this last evening of the year. But this shaking, which always has something of a farewell in it, does not turn everyone's gaze towards God, and many people, on this night, seek help against it in the intoxication of alcohol. Tonight, in every country and on every street, in every village and town, there will be many people staggering through the turn of the New Year and the New Year with intoxicated heads. Let us not condemn them! They are people who are feeling the shaking of the hour of the twilight very well, but who do not want to show others how much they are affected by the passing of time! Perhaps they are escaping from their own anxieties into a stupor. There are many people who, on the last day of the New Year, feel even more sad. They sink into a feeling of the transience and nothingness of life on earth, they fall into depression, they become melancholy. This mood can be very dangerous, because it robs you of your will to live and your vitality, to the point where you can no longer do anything with yourself.
The two travellers on the road to Emmaus were in danger of being overcome by despair. That was why they almost clung to the stranger who joined them on the road. Let us, too, brothers and sisters, take refuge in Jesus in the late hours of this year. It is now that we really feel our need of the Saviour, of Jesus Christ, who came that "if anyone believes in Him, he shall not perish but have eternal life". It is now that we really feel the need for Jesus, when the sins and failures of the past year weigh on our souls one by one. Now, when our souls are struggling with sad feelings and memories, now is the time for Him to stay with us, so that on New Year's Eve, in the joyful hours of our New Year's Eve, our being together may be illuminated and sanctified by His purity and light: for is it worth anything if He is there with us?! We know that Jesus did not deny the request of those two wayfarers. He went to stay with them, sat down at the table with them, took the bread in his hands, blessed it, broke it, distributed it among them. Just like the night before Good Friday, when he got the Lord's Supper. And in this holy act, the eyes of these people were opened at once, and they joyfully recognized Him who was sitting among them. Their souls were lifted up. Brothers and sisters, on this evening, everyone can count on Jesus coming to him with full assurance of faith. He is willing to come to all who truly desire and expect Him. The light of Christmas still shines in our homes, as a testimony that the Lord of all has become our brother and friend, that Jesus has sat down at the table with us, with us ignorant people, to walk with us uninterrupted on our journey as an invisible companion. And this miracle of God's descent and dwelling among us happens again and again whenever a human heart truly opens itself to him.
How does this happen, the opening of our hearts to God? Let me tell you from experience, there is one thing in which the human heart opens itself most fully to God: that something is thanksgiving. If you truly want Jesus to come to you with his forgiving love, his peace, his comforting joy, then try this evening to give thanks from the heart for all the protection and help you have received from him this year, for all the divine faithfulness he has given you for three hundred and sixty-five days. Some might say with bitterness, "I really don't know why I should give thanks when this year has brought me nothing but bitterness, disappointment, and sadness! Well, my brothers, I know that none of us has any reason to talk like that! Just start to really reflect on whether there was anything in the past year for which you should be grateful, for which you should give thanks, and all at once you will find in it not one but many things, more and more experiences, events in which the goodness and love of God in our lives became evident. Let us not forget that whoever feels sorry for himself, complains, grumbles, is discontented tonight, is closing his own heart so that Jesus is forced to go on. But in thanksgiving, the heart opens wide before God, Jesus enters and stays inside with His blessing, we are with Him now, we can say goodbye to the old year and go on, forward to the new!
Come, let us pray with the travellers of Emmaus:
"O Jesus, poor you!
He asks, he waits, he longs to call:
Thou preparest it: for thee
This heart will be your home.
Come, then, into my faithful heart.
Though this lodging be poor,
But ever grateful,
So blessed is Christ."
Amen
(Canticle 312, verse 4)
Date: 31 December 1963 New Year's Eve