Lunar New Year
Vietnamese Catholic Community

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Tuesday 28 January, 2025
Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre, Westminster

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Tonight, we gather together as a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, united in our Catholic faith, proud of our cultural traditions, full of gratitude for all the gifts we have received in the past twelve months, and full of hope as we look forward to another year, entrusting ourselves, our families, all our loved ones, and the communities in which we live to the mercy, compassion, and love of God during the year which stretches out before us. 

In the Vietnamese tradition, and in the wider community of all those who celebrate the lunar New Year, this is the Year of the Snake. As I understand it, the snake symbolises many things: some are positive and express hopes, dreams and qualities which are deeply Christian; others are in some ways less positive and for us, as Christians, express attitudes and behaviours which the Lord may be calling us to recognise in ourselves and offer to Him, so that he might purify them and help us to become the people He is calling us to be.

In many ancient cultures, snakes are seen symbolically as wise, determined, and caring. They are hard-working and strive to form deep bonds in their relationships with others. And very importantly, they don’t give up in the face of difficulties. They have clear goals and work hard to achieve them. At the same time, however, this determination and single-mindedness, if taken to an extreme, can lead to a tendency, in pursuing their aims, to ignore the feelings and even the rights of others. We see something of this in the ancient Jewish tradition of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. 

Many of you here tonight would have been born in a Year of the Snake, but of course many more of you would not. For us as Christians what is important is that no matter in what year we are born, we have the courage and the honesty to recognise both our strengths and our weaknesses and bring them all before the Lord, asking Him to bless and strengthen all that is good in us and to heal all that is broken or damaged or negative in us.

One way in which we can test the level of courage and honesty we have is by allowing tonight’s gospel to shine a light on our lives. For us as Christians, no matter what year we are born in and no matter under what sign we live, it is the values of the gospel as they are expressed in the Beatitudes, which we are called to live by.

Tonight then, as we look back over the last twelve months, and look forward to the next twelve months which lie ahead, we might ask ourselves these questions:
Am I really poor in spirit as Jesus asks me to be? Do I regard growing richer and richer financially as the most important task of my life? Do I ultimately put my trust only in my financial security? Is this really what the Lord is asking of me?
Am I able to mourn? Am I able to love so deeply and so generously and so selflessly that when I lose someone I love, either through death or in some other way, I feel that loss and turn to the Lord who can give me comfort? 

In my relationships within my family, and within this Vietnamese community of faith, and with my friends or colleagues at work or at school, am I meek, gentle, sensitive, attentive to others’ needs, or am I perhaps always thinking only about what is best for me?
Am I concerned for justice, for treating people fairly, for not taking advantage of others, or do I perhaps see things only from my own point of view?
Am I really a merciful person, ready to forgive freely and generously when someone hurts me, or am I more inclined to hold grudges, to be resentful, or even to seek revenge?
Am I pure in my heart, always careful to treat other people with respect, with dignity, with sensitivity, and to act always with their best interests at heart, rather than my own?
Am I a peacemaker, always seeking to build up rather than to tear down and to resolve problems and difficulties rather than to create them.
And lastly, am I ready to keep trying to be all of these things, even when others oppose me and work against me?

In some ways, these are very challenging questions, and tonight, of course, is a night for celebration and for hope, a night for rejoicing rather than for sadness or regret.  In our Catholic tradition, this year has been proclaimed by Pope Francis as a Jubilee Year of Hope. Perhaps the best way to celebrate this Year of Hope, and to contribute to making it a Year of Hope, is to take the opportunity that the lunar New Year offers us to decide that, as best we can, each one of us is going to try and build into our lives these qualities that Jesus speaks about, these qualities that we call the Beatitudes. 

Then, for each one of us, whether or not we were born under the sign of the Year of the Snake, 2025 really can be a Year of Hope. As your Archbishop, I want once again to say to you, as I have on other occasions, just how important the Vietnamese Catholic community is to the life of the Catholic Church here in our Archdiocese. In thanking you for the wonderful contribution you continue to make, I want to invite you tonight to imagine how much more your community can contribute to the life of the Church if you, together, become even more a community which lives by these qualities of the Beatitudes. So let us all make 2025 not just the Year of the Snake but the Year of Hope, because we make it in the end, as every year should be, the Year of Faith in Jesus Christ and the Year of Fidelity to him.