EVERY END IS A NEW BEGINNING

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Yesterday, we bid farewell to 2025 and today we salute the New Year, hoping that we will achieve higher goals and look forward to seeing them come true for the benefit of humankind.

It may be easy to think that a new year is a mere date and that nothing changes fundamentally—neither the orbits of celestial bodies trace nor daily life on Earth, our home. Our relationships more or less stay the same too. Why then do we keep repeating this routine, generation after generation, since antiquity?

That is one side of the coin. Yet, like everything else, we should also recognize that beneath the surface, there is a deeper reality about which I would like to highlight three points:

1. We measure almost everything in our world. Think about it. For instance, what would our education system be like without its stages— kindergarten, elementary, middle school, high school, followed by college years? Without a beginning and an end, we would lose the sense of fulfillment and the motivation to move forward.
2. The New Year is the shortest path to a sense of renewal. As we take everything for granted, we lose our capacity to appreciate beauty, and a sense of purpose for even the little things in our life, which in fact make up the magnificent whole of our lives. Every second, a flowing river is carrying new water in such quantities and speed that it would be impossible for us to perceive in the twinkling of our eyes. There is an impetuous freshness to it that speaks of permanent renewal, no matter how you measure time—a minute, an hour, a day.
3. The beginning and end of the year remind us that everything has a beginning and an end. Yet, more importantly, every end marks a new beginning. There may be joyous or bitter experiences. And when our long journey in this world comes to a close, what is the end on this side of life from a Christian perspective will continue in a new dimension, in the very words of the One who said, “I am the Path, the Resurrection and the Life.”

With these thoughts, I wish you a healthy, happy, and joyous New Year— “Shnorhavor Nor Dari,” as we say in Armenian—and may it be full of God’s Grace.