Homily: The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God – Cycle C
Well, here we are!
It’s a new year and once again everything seems possible. Now I suppose that perhaps more than a few of
us have spent the last few weeks lamenting all that wasn’t accomplished in the
past year: those resolutions we so fervently resolved which, for a multitude of
legitimate reasons, perhaps never quite materialized as we had imagined they
would. Nevertheless, today everything is
new and full of possibilities. And it’s
likely that many of us have made new resolutions, which, I suppose, means that
we are confident that this year we will actually keep them.
You know, I like that about us. I like the fact that even when we don’t
always accomplish what we’ve set out to do, that we don’t let that keep us from
starting again. In other words, we don’t
despair that there is something more to accomplish, in spite of the fact that
we’ve fallen short. I think this is a
very Catholic attitude, by the way. As
Catholics, we routinely acknowledge when we’ve failed to live up to our
expectations—in other words, when we’ve “missed the mark”—and, once we do, we
decide to start anew, with a clean slate, and strive once again to achieve
those good goals we set for ourselves.
Sounds a little bit like the Sacrament of Reconciliation, doesn’t it? Putting all of that aside, however, and
turning back to our resolutions for this new year, I’d like to consider for a
moment what it is that Mary has to teach us about making resolutions.
Throughout these last eight days, the Gospel readings have
often reminded us of how, in various situations, Mary encountered things that
were distressing, confusing, and astounding; and that, after each of them, how she
“held those things in her heart, reflecting on them.” First was the message from the shepherds of
what they had seen and heard from the angels.
Then was the words of Simeon in the Temple, in which he prophesied that
a “sword would pierce her heart.”
Finally, there was the losing and finding of the child Jesus in the
Temple, in which Jesus’ words confounded her.
After each of these situations, we are told that Mary “held these things
in her heart and reflected on them.” In
other words, that she practiced silence.
I would venture to guess that most all of our resolutions involve
something active, that is, something we’d like to accomplish: I’m going to
exercise more, take that trip I’ve always wanted to take, learn how to golf, or
play an instrument, or how to cook. And
these are all good things, of course. However,
they are all things bound to create “mental noise”: a nagging voice in the back
of our minds constantly reminding us that we have yet to accomplish the goal
that we set out for ourselves. But what
if one of our resolutions this year was to reflect on more things in our
hearts? In other words, what if we
resolved to “practice silence” this year?
In his final homily of 2012, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
offered advice for how we can overcome the inevitable disappointments—both with
ourselves and with the world—that we encounter in our daily lives. He said, “we must be able to remain in
silence, in meditation, in calm and prolonged reflection; we must know how to
stop and think. In this way, our mind
can find healing from the inevitable wounds of daily life, can go deeper into
the events that occur in our lives and in the world, and come to the knowledge
that allows us to evaluate things with new eyes.” In other words, our retired Holy Father was
encouraging us to ponder more deeply the events of our lives and thus to come
to see more clearly how our faith shapes our response to them and our own
ability to grow within them. (Pope
Benedict, himself, would, just a couple of months after speaking these words,
resign from the papacy: giving evidence that he was practicing what he
preached.)
Thus, it seems that our Blessed Mother does have something
to teach us about making resolutions. In
all of these events of her life, she did not turn to media outlets to hear what
everybody else was saying about what had happened in order to try and make
sense of it for herself. Rather, she
turned to silence. In other words, Mary
learned to pray with these events so as to see more clearly how her faith would
shape her response to them and her ability to grow within them.
Just this past Sunday, we heard in the Gospel that after
the incident in the Temple, “[Jesus] went down with [Mary and Joseph] and came
to Nazareth and was obedient to them” and that he “advanced in wisdom and age
and favor before God and man.” I suspect
that one of the things that he learned from his Mother—whom we venerate today
precisely because she is his mother—was how to reflect on things in his heart:
a skill that I suspect he perfected in the remaining “hidden years” in Nazareth
before he began his public ministry.
My brothers and sisters, Mary is our mother, too. Perhaps this year she could teach us how to
ponder deeply in our hearts: that is, how to practice silence. In doing so, perhaps we’ll find that, in
doing less, we’ve actually accomplished a whole lot more.
Given at Saint Mary’s
Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – January 1, 2019
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of
God
