Expression

We close the year's procession of historical figures with two saints of our own time, friends in the work of love, who proved that holiness is not a relic of the past. You have met St. John Paul II, the pope who helped free a continent and called the whole world, especially the young, to be 'not afraid' and to become saints. Beside him stands St. Teresa of Calcutta, 'Mother Teresa' (1910-1997), a small Albanian nun who heard a call within her call: to leave her convent school and go out into the worst slums of Calcutta, India, to serve 'the poorest of the poor', the dying, the abandoned, the lepers whom no one else would touch. With almost nothing, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, who now serve the destitute across the globe. She picked the dying out of the gutters so they could die knowing they were loved; she said that in each one she served 'Jesus in his distressing disguise.' The world, watching, saw in this tiny woman a holiness so luminous it could not be ignored, and she became, for believers and unbelievers alike, the very face of compassion in the modern age. She was canonized in 2016; her feast is September 5. Together these two friends, the pope who moved nations and the nun who washed the dying, show the same truth from two directions: that the universal call to holiness is real, that saints are still being made, and that the story of the world, which you have followed from Sumer to the present, is still being written, by people exactly like you who say 'yes' to God.

The last leg of our musical journey races through the most explosive century of all. Jazz, which came of age in the 1920s, gave birth to a whole family of popular music: from swing to rhythm and blues, and then, in the 1950s, to rock and roll, which itself drew deeply on the blues and gospel of Black America. From rock came an ever-branching tree, pop, soul, folk, hip-hop, electronic music, the soundtrack of the modern world, now carried instantly to every corner of the globe by the digital revolution. Music has never been more abundant or more available than it is today. Yet abundance raises an old question in a new way: what is music for? You have heard, across this year, the Hurrian hymn of ancient Mesopotamia, the chant of the monasteries, the soaring polyphony of Palestrina, the genius of Bach, the storms of Beethoven, the cry of the spirituals. In every age, the deepest music has reached for something beyond entertainment, it has given voice to the soul's joy and sorrow and its longing for God. The Church has always known that music can lift the heart to heaven in a way mere words cannot; St. Augustine said that 'to sing is to pray twice.' Sacred music endures, and in our own day many are rediscovering chant and great hymnody, finding in them a stillness and beauty the noisy world cannot give. As the year of music closes, carry this question with you: amid all the sound of the modern world, what music truly feeds your soul and lifts it toward what is good, true, and beautiful?

Here is the writing that crowns the year: a personal synthesis essay answering the final question, 'How does the story of the world fit together, and where do I stand in it?' You have spent a year traveling from the first cities of Mesopotamia to the present day, watching the faith, art, music, the saints, and the great human story of freedom and dignity unfold together. Now you gather it into one reflection. Today, brainstorm: which threads meant the most to you? Perhaps the unfolding of the faith from Abraham to John Paul II; perhaps the slow, costly growth of human dignity and freedom from the first laws of Hammurabi through the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement; perhaps the role of beauty, the line from Lascaux to the cathedrals to the renewal of sacred art. Choose one or two threads and trace how they ran through the whole year. Then, the heart of the essay: 'where do I stand in it?' This is your moment to reflect honestly and maturely, not just on what happened, but on what it means to you, and how you want to take your own place in a story that is still being written. Today, brainstorm your threads, draft a thesis, and outline the essay. Then write your best, blending narrative, explanation, and reflection, and polish it with the master editing checklist from Day 3. See the week's writingAssignment for the full prompt, length, and rubric. This is your capstone; give it your finest work, and let it be your 'Amen' to the year.

The whole year has been, in a sense, a procession of saints, from St. Michael and King David, through Augustine and Benedict, Francis and Aquinas, Joan and Teresa of Avila, the North American Martyrs, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Katharine Drexel and Mother Cabrini, Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, to John Paul II and Mother Teresa. Across every age of the world, in palaces and prisons, monasteries and slums, ordinary people said 'yes' to God and became extraordinary. The story of the world, you have seen, is really the story of grace at work in human freedom, and it is not finished. There is a place in it left open, and it has your name on it. The universal call to holiness means the next saint could be you, right where you are, in the life you are living now. That is where you stand in the story: not as a spectator at its end, but as one called to take up the thread and carry it forward, toward the heaven that is the world's true home. Close the year by praying for the grace to be a saint, and by giving thanks for the whole journey. Amen.