a new year of graces

Happy New Year!  In celebration, here is an excerpt from a prayer of Adrienne von Speyr's called "Thanksgiving after Confessing at the End of the Year": 

Lord, ... we should have sought you in all things, we should have relished the year's joys as coming from you, we ought to have taken on ourselves its sufferings as willed or permitted by you, we ought to have followed every path you opened to us.

And yet there is no need to look back dolefully on this year, for like every year it was a year of your grace.  A year in which you helped us, ceaselessly encouraged us, and showered us with joys and an endless number of good gifts. ...

Therefore, we thank you for having done everything for us exactly as we needed, we thank the Father, who let you become man for our sake we thank the Holy Spirit, whose constant effort has been to realize your mission in our existence.

Amen.