The Sadness of the New Year

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Personally, I’m not big on dates and times. I have often forgotten my birthday, and a couple of years ago assumed I was a year older than I actually was – without really thinking about it.

So the New Year holds little meaning for me. I see such observances as human inventions, and though I know society would be hard pressed to function without keeping track of time, I sometimes wonder if we would be better off without it.

But I know that the New Years is among the saddest of times for many people. While some people party much of the night and most of the morning, others feel depressed, thinking that with the close of another year, they have left behind part of their lives and are a year closer to the end.

It’s no wonder when the “theme song” of New Years is the old Scottish tune, “Auld Lang Syne,” whose lyrics are:  

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:

Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On Old lang syne.

On Old lang syne my Jo,
On Old lang syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
On Old lang syne.

Evidently, there are various versions and interpretations of these odd words, ascribed to the poet Robert Burns, but when combined with the melody, it’s a decidedly sad song. “Old Lang Syne” is roughly translated as “long, long ago,” according to Wikipedia. The song does nothing to lessen the overall sadness of the New Year, a sadness which I believe is associated with loss of the past and fear of the future and, ultimately, of death.

So, what are skeptical seekers of God to make of New Years and its rituals?

First, don’t place much importance to the passing of another year. Life goes on, or doesn’t in some cases, in a continuum, completely unaware of months and years. The search for God also goes on, for non-believers – and if they are interested in a genuine faith that is never smug or certain – for believers.

St. Therese
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One of the most popular saints for Catholics of my generation is St. Therese of Lisieux, named for her hometown in France. A Carmelite nun, she’s known as “the Little Flower,” and “St. Therese of the Child Jesus.” She lived to be only 24 in the last part of the 19^th century, and I’ve always thought of her as a pious, syrupy saint with whom I have nothing in common.

But Tomas Halik, the Czech philosopher and psychologist, who won the 2014 Templeton Prize and whom I have often quoted in these blogs, writes that he recently discovered the “real” Therese, someone who had grave doubts about God and life after death.

“I no longer believe in eternal life,” Halik quotes her as saying when she was close to death from tuberculosis. “I feel that there is nothing beyond this mortal life.”

“My mind is gripped by the arguments of the worst materialists,” she is also quoted as saying.

Says Halik: “Not only was Therese to know the collapse of the sweet life of piety, which she had always known up to then; her previous profound sense of God’s closeness was to be swallowed up by mist, darkness, and emptiness.” According to Halik, she describes how Christ led her into a subterranean space “where no sun shines any longer.”

Obviously, no one knows the true state of her mind at the very end of her life. But what is most remarkable about Therese, writes Halik, “is the way she accepted and perceived her contest with God, with darkness and forlornness, her experience with the absence of God, and the eclipse of her faith. She accepted it as a mark of solidarity with unbelievers.”

The point here is not to wish this kind of doubt on anybody, particularly a dying person, nor is it meant to question the value of faith. On the contrary, it’s meant to suggest that without doubt and skepticism, we’re unlikely to understand the real value of faith and unlikely to pursue it with seriousness.

Therese accepted her doubt because she knew and appreciated the joy of belief.