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JANUARY ’05 MESSAGE

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

At the dawn of a New Year, one tends to make resolutions – mostly of giving up something – a habit (smoking is a popular and recurring candidate for surrender), an excess of some kind, or some such thing. Positive resolutions are less popular, such as requires ‘doing’ something, not normally done or practised in the year just gone by (exercise, for instance) or living according to some prescribed rules or ritual.

The reference to ritual is relevant to our Masonic resolve, for there’s nothing that one can add to the system of morality which our Rituals so amply illustrate by symbolisms or more directly. However despite our being familiar with the prescriptions of our Rituals – Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth – for starters, the various obligations taken at various stages of one’s Masonic Career, the addresses and charges delivered from the higher echelons to the less advanced Brethren, the practise thereof, perhaps, needs to be more faithfully followed.

There is no aspect of civilized behaviour and social responsibility that the rituals of Free Masonry does not cover, and they provide an easy to follow handbook as it were, to put into practise. To quote just a couple of examples – in the Charge after initiation – a most enervating exposition to not only the Initiate to whom it is addressed but to him who delivers it, and to the rest of the Brethren who are privileged to be in the audience, and to hear it again and again. The Charge lays out the framework of Freemasonry, the characteristics of its membership and the responsibilities pertaining thereto, and ultimately the self-development which it prescribes! Another example which covers a whole gamut of Masonic behaviour is the Antient Changes and Regulations which are read to the candidate for the Worshipful Master’s Chair, and which every member of a Lodge is privileged to hear once a year, even if he does not necessarily go over it in the Book of Constitutions. Is there anything that one can add to those charges?

Even if a ‘daily advancement’ in Masonic knowledge is not possible, I am sure at least an annual reflection on these various aspects of our wonderful fraternity and its ethical under-pinnings would greatly enhance the peace and good order of society. Let us resolve in the New Year to contribute our mite to that cause, and to practise those virtues outside the Lodges which we have been taught in them – so that the World may know …..

I take this opportunity of wishing all my Brethren, a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year and to remain committed to the service of our fraternity and to society at large.