A new beginning is always a step forward.  How often we have heard students say regretfully “I have been very careless in my studies, I have wasted my time.”  Sometimes elderly people say:  “I had a beautiful chance to come up in life, I did not use it.  Suppose I had used that chance, I would have been a very different person now. But it is too late.”

These experiences remind us of one thing:  we can make our life meaningless if we miss the point:  life once wasted never comes back.  And often people postpone good deeds by not following up their good resolutions.  At the end they say:  “It is too late.”

If a young person says “When I become old I will try to live a real Christian life, go to church and think of God.  But there is still plenty of time for that.”  Yes, it is quite natural to think so.  When we are young we are not so much afraid of death for we have the feeling that death is rather for the old.  Can we postpone doing good?  If we do not practice playing a musical instrument we soon forget how to play it.  So also if we forget to pray, forget to do good, we may even forget God.  How many people even forget their own mother tongue if they do not use it for a long time.  Jesus fasted and overcame evil through self-discipline.

The Church offers us this holy season to renew ourselves, to start anew – “it is never too late.”