To Know God and Face the Future

As we enter a new year, Hebrews 2 reminds us that Christ did not merely come to save us abstractly, but to live a truly human life of righteousness before God. In taking on flesh and blood, He sanctified ordinary obedience—trust, faithfulness, endurance—and showed us what it looks like to live as a son fully dependent on the Father. Augustine teaches that our loves are disordered, and Christ reorders them by example as well as by grace, teaching us how rightly to love God and neighbor. The humanity of Christ is therefore not only our comfort but our pattern: He goes before us as the pioneer of a faithful human life. As the year turns, we are called not to invent a new self, but to be conformed more deeply to the righteous life of the Son who became our brother.