With the 2026 path unfolding ahead, New Year’s Day maps out the true way through devotion to Our Lady, who always graciously leads the way to her Divine Son, year after year. He declared, once and for all: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Mary invites us to put on Christ, like a wedding garment. Only when we are properly clad in righteousness is it possible to enter the wedding feast. Explicit guidance is given to each SDC Member (and Associate, too) so that: “Everywhere he is to stand out … by giving good example in his words, by the way he dresses, and in his behavior.” In such garb and at the Lamb’s High Feast, the beauty of holiness is revealed. It is this sublime beauty for which we long and pray to be given; it is greater than just good moral behaviour.
The Navajo Indians of North America had a formal ritual called Hózhó, the Way of Beauty. This tradition was intended to restore and preserve the harmony and right relationships with all creation and peoples. The ‘Way of Beauty’ used repetition of a short prayer: “In beauty I walk”, that invoked beauty in thought, word, and deed. The formal ritual of Hózhó was performed to restore and strengthen the individual person, as well as the whole tribe, in harmony and appreciation of beauty in nature and justice in action. The final blessing from this long ceremony of Hózhó concludes with a chant of thanksgiving:
In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me I walk;
With beauty behind me I walk;
With beauty below me I walk;
With beauty around me I walk.
It has become Beauty again.
In our own Christian tradition, St Francis’s, All Creatures of Our God and King, appeals similarly to beauty and right relationship in creation, as in our Brother Sun and Sister Moon. There is also St Patrick’s Breastplate, a long hymn to the Blessed Trinity that longs for wholeness and unity with Jesus:
Christ be with me
Christ within me
Christ behind me
Christ before me
Christ within me…
Christ above me
Christ below me
Christ in quiet
Christ in danger
Christ in hearts of all that love me
Christ in mouths of friends and strangers.
At the beginning of a New Year, may we remain in the Love and Beauty of Christ Jesus, who is preparing all the providential ways for us to walk in. As we go forward together on this sacred way, maybe we could sing that little French Christmas Carol, Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella:
Ah! Ah! Que la mère est belle, (Oh, the Mother is beautiful!)
Ah! Ah! Ah! Que l’Enfant est beau ! (Oh, the Baby is beautiful!)
May we walk in beauty in 2026!
Ruth D. Lasseter
SDC Associate
Indiana, USA
