While January 1 is dedicated to the Mother of God, it is also a most appropriate day to invoke the Holy Spirit.
The Vatican’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy suggests turning to the Holy Spirit for inspiration in the New Year.
[The faithful] should try to lend a Christian understanding to this custom making of these greetings an expression of popular piety. The faithful, naturally, realize that the “new year” is placed under the patronage of the Lord, and in exchanging new year greetings they implicitly and explicitly place the New Year under the Lord’s dominion, since to him belongs all time.
A connection between this consciousness and the popular custom of singing the Veni Creator Spiritus can easily be made so that on January 1 the faithful can pray that the Spirit may direct their thoughts and actions, and those of the community during the course of the year.
The hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, opens with the words, “Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, and in our souls take up Thy rest; come with Thy grace and heavenly aid to fill the hearts which Thou hast made.”
Later on in the hymn we sing the words, “Kindle our sense from above, and make our hearts o’erflow with love; with patience firm and virtue high the weakness of our flesh supply.”
It is a beautiful hymn and provides a powerful invocation of the Holy Spirit over the New Year.
If you are looking for an alternative way to ring in the New Year, consider praying to the Holy Spirit for inspiration.
And today we celebrate...