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Many celebrate the end of the year with parties and other social events, gathering with friends and family to watch the New Year begin.
While there is nothing wrong with such celebrations, an alternative way to end the year is to do so in Eucharistic adoration or by attending Mass.
The Vatican’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy suggests these two traditions as possibilities when bringing in the New Year.
In some places, especially in monasteries and in associations of the faithful with a particular devotion to the Holy Eucharist, December 31 is marked by a vigil of prayer that concludes with the celebration of the Holy Mass. Such vigils are to be encouraged and should be celebrated in harmony with the liturgical content of the Christmas Octave, and not merely as a reaction to the thoughtless dissipation with which society celebrates the passage from one year to another, but as a vigil offering of the new year to the Lord.
Most parishes are not familiar with such a celebration, but if enough parishioners are interested in offering to God the New Year in this way, it is possible that a new tradition could begin at the parish.
Alternatively, if a pastor is not interested in staying up late to offer Mass at midnight, some places offer perpetual Eucharistic adoration and you could end your year with a holy hour before Jesus.
Whatever you do, consider ending your year in prayer, offering everything to God.
And today we celebrate...