The two basic resolutions that had been formed somewhere along the refugees' common journey away from strife would have been to survive and thrive. Beyond these two resolutions that continue in this new year would have to about character. Would a third resolution be to refuse a handout or an opportunity so that someone else more needy may have it first? Would another be to help a neighbor in need regardless of religion? Would yet another be to thank God that they have their lives even though they might have lost their possessions?
What about the young refugees who had lost their parents and are alone in a world that is unfamiliar to them and hostile those who are vulnerable? What kinds of resolutions could they have in mind? Revenge? Forgive those who killed their family and build a better society? Could they even have any hope in a new year in which the pains deep down in their hearts remain fresh? Despite the disproportionate burden of their sufferings, the children in a refugee camp frozen in time in the photograph below [1] waved to the rest of the world and to new year revelers in New York City Times Square and other cities around the world:
If anyone ought to feel guilty, this blogger ought to be at the front of the guilt line, without having to suffer much and having much that is beyond one's basic needs. His cross may be light relative to cross that each child in the photograph has to bear but it is nonetheless a cross, one that he bears with love for Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, as much as he knows what that love entails which is not much, being a descendant of the first refugees from the Garden of Eden and of Sin.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/9791269/Winter-storms-snow-torrential-rain-and-flash-floods-hit-the-Middle-East.html?frame=2447279
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