Beginning Work in 2026 In a Special Way On This Traditional Feast of the Epiphany

Let's begin 2026 in a special way. 

First, we might recognize that today is the traditional Feast of the Epiphany. Of course, the newfangled calendar "moves" the feast to a Sunday. But we Catholics who are aware of our history and tradition know that this Feast was kept for centuries on January 6th. So there it is. But back to beginning. 

One reason beginnings are special is that there's a freshness to them. As each new day begins, we might remember this. We begin again, with a kind of clean slate. And we can apply this to the beginning of our new calendar year. 

Beginning again is a gift from God. He grants us each new day so that we can so begin again. No matter how may times we may have failed or fallen, we can begin again. We can make a fresh beginning.

The New Year sort of takes this concept of beginning, of beginning again, and wraps it in a big box with a bow on it. So many of us make New Year's Resolutions. Aren't these created with beginning again in mind?

Even if resolutions aren't your preference or style (they're not mine), we can still take advantage of this beginning to the New Year. Our choice for 2026 is to meditate a bit on the life's work of St. Peter Claver, whose feast we celebrate on September 9th. It will help give us a fresh perspective on our own work.

This from the website williedoyle.org: 

St. Peter Claver was one of those generous heroic souls whom God sends upon this earth to serve as a stimulus to our zeal, to urge us on to dare and do great things for His glory. Alone he stood upon the beach of that reeking haunt of sin, Cartagena, and saw the galley-ship vomit forth its human living burden of slaves. He saw these poor wretches dazed with their long confinement, sick in body and weary of soul, cast on the burning sand, their eyes wild with terror at the vision of the nameless death they thought awaited them. Here was scope for his zeal. Was not the image of Jesus stamped deep upon the souls of each of them? Did they not bear the likeness of the sacred Humanity in their tortured limbs? Was this goodly harvest to be left ungathered and hell alone to reap the fruit of man’s cupidity?

COMMENT: St Peter Claver SJ lived a remarkable life. He was a slave to the slaves who were captured and brought to Cartagena. He looked after their temporal and spiritual needs, catechising and baptising up to 300,000, and defended their rights and welfare when occasion arose. Normally a third or more of the slaves who were brought to Cartagena died en route from disease and ill treatment. Numerous contemporary accounts report that the smell of the diseased slaves who arrived on the slave ships was overwhelming, and practically nobody else was physically able enter their cramped, sweltering huts where they were left to die. But Peter Claver braved the disease and the horrors and often fed and washed to the sick and dying, and could often be found burying the dead himself. One biographer said that Peter Claver encompassed in one life the missionary zeal of St Francis Xavier, the dedication to the confessional of St John Vianney and the care for the sick and the lepers of St Damien of Molokai. Pope Leo XIII, who canonised St Peter, said that no other life, except the life of Christ, had as much impact on him personally.

https://williedoyle.org/thoughts-for-september-9-st-peter-claver-from-fr-willie-doyle-10/

And for a practical way to inhale and incorporate the remarkable way St. Peter went about his work each day - year after year - this resolution from Father Willie Doyle: 

It seems to me the best and most practical resolution I can make...is to determine to perform each action with the greatest perfection. This will mean a constant “going against self,” ever agendo contra, at every moment and every single day. I have a vast field to cover in my ordinary daily actions, e.g. to say the Angelus always with the utmost attention and fervour. I feel, too, that Jesus asks this from me, as without it there can be no real holiness.

Happy New Year!