nuggets of spiritual wisdom
So another year has passed—and a new year is entering the series of passing years, to pass away like all the others. Day after day, month after month, year after year, is continually added to—and the increase of time shortens time. The river of time flows ceaselessly and swiftly, rushing toward the point beyond which time will no longer exist. But we, too, do not stand on the banks of this river, to be mere bystanders, spectators of its course. No, but along it or together with it and in it we ourselves are drawn along the same path of temporary changes to our end. Therefore, the thought of time is not foreign to us; it concerns a very essential feature of our temporal life, and if it can occupy us at any time, then it should occupy us even more inevitably now, when we gather in churches to pray to the Lord Almighty for the sanctification and blessing of the new year. (In our days the New Year's prayer service is traditionally held on the evening of December 31st (New Style) or January 1st (New Style) — Ed.)St. Theophane the Recluse