The best way to usher in a truly "new" year is to stop waiting for things to get better on their own, and instead recognize what is essential and reach out now to help others, Pope Francis said.

This New Year, perhaps more than most, stirs up awareness of time and its strange ways. Through the unsettling days of 2020 and 2021, some have found the time long and heavy, waiting for the lonely burdensome time to pass so they can regain their lives. For others, time has come to an end as effects of the coronavirus or other painful happenings claimed their lives. Still others have found time opening up for them, enabling them to do or explore new things. Some have spent more time in prayer.

It is with some relief that we can soon put 2021 in the proverbial rear-view mirror.

As we bask in the Christmas season and the days leading up to 2022, perhaps now is the time to reflect on this past year.

This unforgettable year, this annus horribilis, is mercifully drawing to the end, but the virus that has so consumed our lives is not.

There is always something a little magical that happens as the calendar turns to Jan. 1. It’s like a giant eraser appears and wipes our slate clean, throwing off the dust of all that marred the previous 12 months. It’s a new year, a fresh start, a new dawn, another shot, a blank sheet.

The early days of 2020 have already relegated many best intentions and New Year’s resolutions to the try-again-next-year bin.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis opened 2020 with a strong call to acknowledge the dignity of women, end violence against them and stop the exploitation of women’s bodies.

I am writing this column late in December, thinking of the annual ritual of making resolutions. I do not think in my life I ever followed through on a New Year’s resolution — but I have made resolutions at other times of the year that I have stuck to like glue. 

VATICAN CITY -- The world will not know peace unless there is an end to violence against women, the exploitation of their bodies and the denial of their dignity, Pope Francis said on the feast of Mary, Mother of God.

VATICAN CITY -- God sent his only begotten son into the world, where he continues to dwell in the hearts of men and women, "urging them to believe, to hope despite everything, and to love by working for the good of all," Pope Francis said.

For sheer numbers, there has never been a decade like the 2010s for saint-making. That’s because Pope Francis canonized over 800 in one go when he declared St. Antonio Primaldo and his 812 companions (martyred in 1480 by an invading Ottoman army in Oranto, southern Italy) saints on May 12, 2013.

The crisis, the kairos moment, the crux of the matter, the hinge of history — none of these are easily discernible, usually. But for Catholics, this last decade has been unusual.

January 1 is right around the corner — to some, that means New Year’s Day. A time for clean slates, a fresh start and all the goal-setting. To the Catholic man or woman, it’s all that and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

The year is about to end and as we begin to sit down and think about our New Year’s resolution we can recall and reflect over the events of the past year to help guide us along.