Traditionally, the month of December is associated with a litany
of joys: Advent season, Christmas celebrations, time spent with family, snow (if
you’re into that sort of thing), and thrice-daily screenings of Home Alone 2. However, in recent years, December—particularly
its second half—has proved ground zero for an all-new, entirely miserable
tradition which unfortunately appears to be rapidly rising above the rest of
the holiday-crop: year-bashing.
Now,
qualifying years as “good” or “bad” is not a new practice. I’ve surly done it
before. The year I made my first vows as a Franciscan friar and moved to
Washington, DC to begin seminary? Good year. The year I spent in seventh grade
pretending to be the oft-forgotten twelve-year-old member of Blink 182? Bad
year. Connoting units of time (such as years) with qualifiers such as “good” or
“bad” is natural, as human beings have an innate tendency to categorize
experiences based off of dominant memories and emotions. This is normal, and should
not be confused with year-bashing. When I refer to year-bashing, I am
describing a phenomenon that is entirely linked to the cultural prominence of
social media. It is an action that takes place in an echo-chamber, involving thousands
(or even millions) of individuals linking like-minds in order to collectively diagnose
a concluding year based upon a communal set of grievances.
What is
the problem with this? Simply put, year-bashing perpetuates a hive-mind of negativity,
hopelessness, and ingratitude. Year-bashing leads to regrettable moments such
as the recent firestorm of anger directed towards American singer Taylor Swift,
who was ridiculed via Twitter for having the alleged gall to proclaim that she “couldn’t
have asked for a better year,” and for thanking her fans for their birthday
wishes. Year-bashing makes it okay for people (especially young people) to
believe that, in a world where evil is a sad but present reality, there is
nothing that can truly be celebrated—there is nothing for which we can be
thankful. Year-bashing says that perceived racism, intolerance, or any variety
of mismanaged social issues render an entire 365-day period null and void. Year-bashing
says that, for as long as a certain man inhabits the residence on 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue, all of time is basically just a big drag—a period to be used
solely to complain and whine and wait for “better days” ahead.
And
this is when I have to ask myself and my fellow millennials: What better days? If we are willing to
allow external things like the death of Tom Petty or the Charlottesville riots
determine how we feel about our lives, how can we ever expect to live with any amount
of joy at all? It seems to me that there are no few amount of people out there
who are quick to blame a specific person or a specific event for their anxiety,
depression, or overall lack of contentment. How can we hope to achieve
happiness if our happiness presumably hinges upon such a narrow set of idealistic
circumstances?
Praying
about this conundrum one morning, I found myself calling to mind the example of
canonized Franciscan friar and holocaust martyr, Maximillian Kolbe. Ordained a
Catholic priest in Poland in the years preceding World War II, Kolbe ministered
in his Nazi-occupied country by operating a temporary hospital, publishing
anti-Nazi pamphlets, and hiding refugee Jews in his community’s friary. When he
refused to cease acting as a priest, he was sent to Auschwitz. There, as a
prisoner, he was famously martyred when he voluntarily took the place of a man
whom guards had chosen to execute as punishment for another inmate’s escape.
Condemned to a starvation bunker, Maximilian Kolbe lasted more than two weeks,
supernaturally resisting starvation and dehydration while spending hours in
prayer to Jesus and Mary. Ultimately, Auschwitz guards executed Kolbe with a
lethal injection, as they needed the bunker empty and could no longer stand his
unwavering courage, optimism, and hope. In the days before he died, however,
eyewitnesses recount that Kolbe would spend hour on his knees, eyes to the
heavens, singing Marian hymns with all of his being.
What a wonderful story! But what, you may ask, does it have
to do with the regrettable practice of year-bashing? To put it bluntly, I
believe that I was called to remember the example of St. Maximilian Kolbe
because it stands as a direct contradiction to the perennial display of
bleakness and anger found at the end of recent calendar years. While Kolbe’s
story is beautiful, it is not unique. The entire Gospel of Jesus Christ is
based off of the idea that we should no longer seek to find joy in the things
of earth, but— as St. Paul suggests—to fix our eyes on things above. This is
not to suggest that a good Christian transcends the world and rejects the flesh
in a clumsy act of dualism, but rather that a good Christian embraces his or
her divine purpose in this world, while still recognizing a higher calling and
rejecting anything that represents a hindrance to that calling. Christianity is
rife with examples of men and women who have acted in this way, setting aside
all external conditions and looking upward to the joy that comes through faith
in God alone. Just as the early Church could not flourish without the blood of
the martyrs flowing as a result of widespread persecution, Saints throughout
the ages have almost always found their path to God via the maintenance of a
radical hope even through the most difficult of times. For younger men and
women, the excellent witness of Pope St. John Paul II is still fresh in mind.
Having lost both of his parents and three of his siblings by the time of his
twenty-first birthday, and struggling to attend underground seminary courses in
Nazi-occupied Poland, the young Saint would have had any number of reasons to
proclaim “#WorstYearEver.” However, he never did that. And it wasn’t because he
didn’t have access to Twitter. It was because, in his heart, he believed that
his faith in God could overcome any external hardships. And he was right.
Our
world is so greatly in need of the example of holy men and women who, like
Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II, take their negative environments and
circumstances not as an occasion to complain or to play the proverbial
victim-card, but as an opportunity to be galvanized by their trials so that
their faith in God and the things of heaven might bring them the true joy that
the world cannot give. As we approach the end of 2017, let us resist the temptation
to take to Facebook or Twitter to rant about all the undesirable things going
on in the world this year. What good does it do? In focusing on our woeful
circumstances, we lose our sense of gratitude for the many blessings of our
lives and the ways in which God has been present to us over the previous twelve
months. Rather than losing ourselves in a barrage of hashtags and jibes, may
the final days of this year find us—like St. Maximilian Kolbe—singing for joy,
despite our hardships. This is the witness the world needs right now, and it is
up to those with faith in God to provide it so that all may come to share in
the true joy that comes through faith.
