Annual Motto 2021
Selig seid ihr! – BLESSED ARE YOU
Bible verse for 2021: Matthew 5
Dear friends of our socioMovens movement!
The year 2020 is behind us, in which the Covid 19 pandemic disrupted all our plans. We have learned to wear masks and keep distance to protect each other. So many people have been infected with the virus, too many have died from this disease – solitary in intensive care units, without saying farewell to their loved ones. Others have lost their jobs; home schooling and video conferencing are part of everyday life for many of us. What a year!
On the threshold of the new year, we can ask ourselves: Did we emerge strengthened from the crisis this year, matured in our humanity and our faith? Have we seen the need of people, the loneliness and helplessness of others, and stood up for them? Vidimus – we have seen, that was our motto, which could not have been more appropriate.
Or was this year marked by self-pity and lamentation over missed opportunities? Pope Francis stated in his Christmas address: “This scourge was a remarkable challenge and, at the same time, a great opportunity to convert ourselves and become more authentic.” I wish that it was so for us. The new year offers us abundant opportunities to begin anew and to support one another in seeing, above all, new ways to love in the midst of crisis.
Therefore, I would like to propose to all of us a new motto for the year, which we can update, concretize and share with each other month by month: BLESSED ARE YOU. You surely know the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1-12), in which people gather around Jesus, hoping for an answer to their worries and needs. These people are not the rich and powerful, but the little ones who, in all their poverty, trust in the blessedness of heaven: who work for peace and justice and who, despite all their hardships, are not bitter, but hope in God. To all these people Jesus says that they are blessed by God and that the splendor of heaven is already on their faces: BLESSED ARE YOU, because all human beings are loved by God!
I invite us to continue to look at the faces of people in this new year, to share their joy and hope, sorrow and fear, and to participate in their longing for justice, for the blessings of heaven. I am sure that wherever this happens, we will experience that something of the blessedness of heaven has already reached us.
There is a song in a modern German version that could become something like our common hymn this year: “Selig seid ihr” (Blessed are You): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdlzSJI-P9o. You can find it on Youtube with original German lyrics, which I have translated into English, so that you can sing the song together in your group and at your meetings. Maybe you can also translate the verses into Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Slovakian, Kazakh, Russian … Maybe we will join together on Zoom to form an international digital choir. Jakob Ohm will again write a spiritual impulse to the verses month by month. So I am convinced that at the end of the year something of this blessedness of heaven will have arrived in our world – and will also have settled on our hearts.
A blessed new year to you all!
Yours
Peter Klasvogt
| 1. Blessed are you if you simply live. Blessed are you When you carry loads. |
| 2. Blessed are you if you learn to love. Blessed are you if you will be kind. |
| 3. Blessed are you when you feel the pain. Blessed are you if you keep sincere |
| 4. blessed are you if you are at peace. Blessed are you while feeling injury. |
| 5. Blessed are you When you heal the wounds Sorrow and grief sharing with yourselves |
| 6. Blessed are you When you fill the Hunger and thirst For each other quench |
| 7. Blessed are you When you break the bonds Unsuspecting thoughts of kindness in your hearts. |
| 8. Blessed are you When you can forgive be support and hold for every one of you |