*** Happy New Year from Les Femmes ***

A friend sent the article below which appeared in his bulletin a few years ago. New beginnings invite us to reflect on the reality of life...and death. Let us all pray in thanksgiving for the time we are given in 2009 and resolve to use it well.

TIME

The old year is past; a new one has just begun, and we are all now one year closer to eternity. For many people this past year, time was no more. One moment they were in time, the next moment they were in eternity. Time is a two sided coin, one side despised and wasted during life, the other priceless and unattainable at the hour of death.

God has given us these days to work out our salvation, but how well do we use them? How often have we observed a man in idle pursuit? If we ask him what he is doing he would reply, "Oh, I am just passing the time."

I remember an old song of many years past. It was called "Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by." Are we just standing on the corners of life watching the days of our salvation going by unused?

To quote Saint Alphonsus De Liguroi:

"O time despised during life, you will be ardently desired by worldlings at the hour of death. The thought that they must very soon appear before Almighty God, to give an account of their lives, fills them with untold confusion and anguish. They will ask for another year, another month or another day to settle the accounts of their conscience, but they will ask in vain. To obtain a single hour they would give all their wealth and worldly possessions, but this hour shall not be given."

Let us therefore exert ourselves to the utmost to accomplish the work of our salvation while there is still time. Do now, what, on the day of judgment, you would then wish you would have done. For at the moment of death, the time of grace will have passed, the time of justice will have come.