Mary’s New Year’s Resolution Can Be Ours
Happy New Year to all of you!
I have the somewhat unenviable task this morning of preaching at a morning Mass on New Year’s Day. So I salute those who are here this morning. You have decided, on the morning after one of the most intense secular celebrations of the year, to overcome any painful residue of merriment and come and worship the Lord and honor the Blessed Virgin Mary on New Year’s Day. And so as long as you are here, I have decided to reward you by giving you a 45-minute homily this morning! (Just seeing if you are alert!)
As a child, I always wondered why I should have to go to Church on New Year’s Day. After all, in the midst of all those Christmas cookies, delicious Christmas leftovers, more wonderful New Year’s food to come, and 453 college football bowl games, why did I have to go to Church to honor Mary as the Mother of God. As a son of devout Catholic parents, there was never an issue of whether we were going. My father watched all those bowl games, so we usually went to church, oh, about this time of the day. I used to think to myself: of course we like the Blessed Virgin, but why on New Year’s Day? Couldn’t the Church have found a different day for us to celebrate Mary? Why not Christmas Eve when she was after all, in Catholic tradition, actually becoming the Mother of God? But in those days in Catholic families, particularly as a kid, you accepted it because you knew you were exercising one of the few rights of children, the right to remain silent.
Theologically speaking, it turns out my doubts actually had some merit. In Church history, celebrating Mary as the Mother of God has occurred at many different times during the year. In Orthodox Churches, it is celebrated on December 26, in keeping with the Byzantine liturgical tradition of honoring Mary on days after we honor Jesus. The Coptic Church, a Christian church in union with the Roman Catholic Church, celebrates the feast on January 16. For centuries in many countries the feast was celebrated at various times. In France, the feast was celebrated on January 18, in Spain on December 18, and in Portugal on October 11.
In Roman tradition however, the feast was always celebrated a week after Christmas (the so-called octave day, which means eight days; we celebrate it however seven days after Christmas for some reason which even today escapes me; I guess you count Christmas Day when you are counting to January 1). This liturgical decision was put into effect to overcome paganism in the Roman Empire by celebrating Mary as the Mother of God instead of the pagan holiday of New Year, which was dedicated to the god Janus. But while many countries followed the Roman tradition, it was not until 1974 when Pope Paul VI declared that the feast be celebrated universally on January 1.
Despite this chaotic march through Church history concerning the celebration of Mary as the Mother of God, when we separate ourselves from narrow liturgical debate, and think about things with a goodly dose of common sense, celebrating Mary on this day makes a great deal of sense. For if we are to celebrate anyone on the first day of the calendar year, why wouldn’t it be Mary?
With the exception of the human Jesus, Mary is the most important human figure in our lives and in the lives of everyone throughout the world. Without her discipleship in agreeing to be the Mother of God, our lives would have no meaning. Each new year would have no meaning. For it is Jesus’ willingness as God to take human form and die for our sins that redeemed us and opened the gates of heaven for those who wish to follow Jesus. And Jesus’ human form was not possible without the motherhood of Mary.
But Mary was not just a vessel. Mary’s discipleship extended to raising the Son of God as an ordinary human being, to seeing, together with Joseph, to his secular and religious upbringing, to watching over him even he did things like take off and preach in the temple, to enjoying the great honors and great things given and said about her Son and enduring the predictions of his fate, to prodding him to begin his earthly ministry at the wedding of Cana, to enduring the extraordinary pain of watching her Son be declared a criminal and be crucified, to rejoicing at his Resurrection, to accepting John the Evangelist as her adopted son, to strengthening and encouraging the Apostles, before and after Pentecost, to spread the Christian faith throughout the world.
If we think about it further, there is also a distinctively American cultural reason for honoring Mary as the Mother of God on January 1. Americans have a tradition about New Year’s that is widely practiced. It is the tradition of New Year’s resolutions. Each year, millions of Americans take stock of their shortcomings and try to improve themselves. We try to lose weight, stop or cut back on drinking, seek to improve relations with family or others we do not like so much, and dedicate ourselves to improving the quality of our work. In my case, I always tell people that my resolution each year is to not only look like Santa Claus, but also act like him!
Most times, these resolutions, despite the best of our intentions, get broken. Even so, the tradition is not really a bad thing. But we could all save ourselves a lot of time and energy by simply reflecting on Mary’s discipleship on this the first day of the calendar year. For Mary, as our Gospel according to Luke says this morning, reflected on her motherhood of Jesus in her heart. It can be said that from the moment the angel Gabriel told her she was to be the mother of God, she made a New Year’s resolution of her own: she would be Jesus’ disciple and be the human model for all who chose to follow Jesus.
And so it is with us, brothers and sisters. Our reading from the Book of Numbers reminds us that the Lord blesses us and keeps us. Through Jesus and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, his face shines upon us. The Lord gives us the true peace of service-based love to God and one another. St. Paul also reminds us this morning that the God calls us to be his children.
What will be our response? My suggestion would be to adopt on this New Year’s the resolution of Mary. Let us be a disciple of Christ every day of our lives. Let us follow the example of Mary. God gives us all that we need to follow him. He instructs through Scripture: love of God and others, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes. God instructs us through the teachings of the Church. And when this special kind of New Year’s resolution in broken, Jesus offers us the cradle to grave health insurance for the soul: the seven sacraments.
And so on this New Year’s morning, let us join Mary in taking a New Year’s Resolution: to be a disciple of Christ every day of this year. We could even save time and energy. Let’s make this a resolution not just for 2009, but also for every day of our lives. For as Mary, the Mother of God understood, it is the only resolution that really matters.