Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (January 1, 2017)

Happy New Year! What will this New Year bring? What will you do, or what will you choose to avoid, so that other better things can take place? In 2017 we can do new and great things. This New Year can be the best yet.

And to make the most of this year, to grow and become more human, more real, more fully alive, many around the world make New Years' resolutions. We resolve to do something and act in ways that either continue our good habits to make them great. Or we resolve to minimize our bad habits and replace them with good ones.

This period of resolutions and goal-setting says something very important about those who make them: we want to change for the better, but we struggle to do so. If we really had more discipline and will-power, we wouldn’t wait until a new year to make needed changes. But let's face it...it's hard to change, our habits dictate many of our choices and can leave us feeling unable to consider new way. Many of us, and myself at times, would rather remain unhappy than undergo the hard work of changing a bad habit that will lead to long-term change and becoming more fully alive God our Merciful Father has called us to be His Holy people, and wants to bless us in Christ, to call us to newer and better things, to bless us as we saw in our first reading from the Book of Numbers.

Our second reading from Galatians reminds us that if we are baptized, our very identity is being a beloved Son or Daughter of God. God has placed His Holy Spirit within our hearts, and something within us wells up with joy, crying out to Him as Father. Our Father's blessings will help us in 2017, help us to overcome our slavery to sin and our slavery to fear: our fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of past regrets, and truly live as a beloved Son or Daughter of so great a Father, our God, believing that we have been made heirs with God in Christ Jesus our Savior.

But in the genius of God's plan for us, He gives us tangible and concrete examples of how to live as a son or daughter. He gives us individuals to be supported by and accountable too. We look to our parents and our friends and family in the faith for guidance and help. The blessing of a mother is particularly special to us. And so on January 1, the Church puts before us a particular support, a singular example, a woman and mother to help keep us accountable to our desire for change, our desire to live our heavenly calling in the New Year. This woman is Mary, the Mother of God, and our mother, the one who bore Christ and the one who will bear us up through her prayers and example, that we might become more fully alive by becoming more and more mature disciples of Jesus our Savior.

So it’s helpful to look more closely at Mary, like us a child of God, and one conceived without sin. Mary's lack of sin doesn't make her weird, it makes her more human, more able to be in relationship, more able to joyfully live as a child of God. Mary was free from the stain and effects of original sin, chose to follow God rather than to personally sin. But that doesn't mean her life was perfect. She was human, too.

Scripture tells us that Mary worried and experienced anxiety. She and her husband Joseph feared public shame when the Holy Spirit came upon her and she was pregnant with Jesus before her marriage too Joseph. She and Joseph were anxious that Herod would try to kill her son, fleeing in haste to Egypt. And when Jesus was 12, Mary anxiously searched for more than a day for her son Jesus who was not in their travel-party. She searched with great anxiety until she found him in the Temple, in His Father’s House. This is not even mentioning the anxiety that surrounded her son's departure for public ministry, his rejection by the Jewish leaders, and his extreme suffering and public death.

And it is because Mary our mother journeyed through anxiety to faith, from fear to joy and peace with God, that she is such a great inspiration and example for us. And Mary's response to her fear, her approach to anxiety is one that we can use in the upcoming year. If we act like Mary, we can allow her to accompany us, to keep us accountable as we walk with Jesus as disciples in the year ahead. So what can we do? What did Mary?

Our Gospel for today gives us Mary's secret for approaching anxiety and turning fear into faith: to keep all the things of life in a meditative perspective, to reflect upon them with God in our heart. The original word or concept that the Scriptures talk of is also translated to consider, to ponder, to turn things over in our minds and hearts. Not to obsess over the past or worry about the future, but to sit and reflect, to pause and pray in silence. This the gift of meditative, mental prayer that Mary wants us to experience in this New Year.
The gift of meditative prayer like that of Mary is that if we pause and pray in this manner, our hearts and thoughts begin to change. Instead of obsessing and "Lord, what did I do...worry...regret...", the Holy Spirit has room to change us for the better. When the discipline of pausing to pray like Mary, our ruminations and reflections more and more turn to thoughts of: Lord, thank you for all you have done. What are you doing, even now? And what do you want me to do?

Praying in this way is a very good thing, a great resolution for us to take up in the New Year. It’s universally needed that meditation and mindfulness are gaining popularity in our modern culture. Maybe our culture has become so preoccupied and our senses so stimulated and busy that all people - religious or otherwise - are seeing the benefits of pondering, of reflecting.

As Catholics, we don't need to look to non-Christian mysticism, we have a meditative, mystical a gold-mine right in our own tradition. Our 2000 year tradition is full of tips and techniques, of people who practiced prayerful pondering. And many have seen their lives blessed and totally changed from the better by this prayerful reflection.
Movie star Mark Wahlberg never starts his day without at least 10 minutes of quiet, reflective prayer in a Catholic church. A practicing Catholic himself, he became dissatisfied with the NOISE and emptiness in his life, and resolved to open himself up to His Loving Father, to drink deeply of the living waters of prayer, and to experience the joy and peace of being a child of God. It has also changed my life. I can't even listen to God or be present to anyone for very long if I don't pray quietly, and first listen to God speak to me of His love. Lead me out of worry and fear, into the joy and hope of God's peaceful Kingdom. I lose focus on God's love for me, my ability to love others, and I begin to be afraid and even lose hope if I do not remain faithful to meditative prayer like Mary did.

But HOW do we do it? How do we like Mary reflect and ponder on what God has done?
First, we must choose to make time for it. IT won't happen unless we carve out the time, intentionally. Where will we find the time? Let's cut into that time we spend worrying or anxiously fretting. Or if that's not possible, cut into our screen time. This meditative prayer is worth it so much, I and friends of mine pray with an alarm clock, so that we force ourselves to block out all distractions during the time allotted for prayer, and don't constantly check our phone to see what's happening or how much time is left.

And let's get down to basics, if we try to sit and be silent and we're not used to it, it's probably going to be really hard. And if we get frustrated or feel flustered by our prayer, we may be tempted to give up on it. So the Church offers us two main techniques to follow Mary in her reflective prayer that we might find Jesus, His power and His peace: these two techniques are (1) Scripture meditation, and (2) the Rosary.

As a child, so often my experience of the Scriptures at Mass was stories about Jesus that would go right over my head. I couldn't even tell you what the Gospel was by the time I made it to the parking lot. But Scripture is God's Word to us, a gift to treasure as much as we would treasure any particle of the Eucharist, the Body of the Lord Jesus. So if we want to reflect on what God is doing, if we want to be like Mary and allow God's Word to guide us through our fear and anxiety in life, we can start by taking the Scriptures and reading them prayerfully, intentionally, and then stopping to reflect. There are many Catholic persons and even whole families who read the Sunday Scripture readings together at the dinner table, or take a chapter of the Bible and read it each day together and talk about it. Other Catholics in our parish ome and read Scripture on Tuesdays in the chapel with Eucharistic Adoration, or make a visit to the Church and pray at a time of convenience during the day. Wherever you pray, in your room, at the dinner table, or at Church, if this is something that you want for yourself or for your family, if you want a blessing of being able to talk about God's great works and discover Him working in your life, please try this week. Resolve in this New Year to take on this new practice and see how God will bless you. The more we reflect with Scripture, the more we will be blessed with God's peace.

But for some, the Rosary is a preferred prayer. The Rosary is particularly good at combatting anxiety and fear. As we hold the blessed beads in our hands, we can tangibly work through our issues, and bring them to the Lord. We do this as we meditate on the mysteries of Jesus and his Mother Mary. The Rosary's repetition and pace allow us to transcend the everyday plane of thought and to experience the peace of the sons and daughters of God. 2017 can be a year for you or your family to take up or to re-commit to the practice of praying the Rosary. 2017 is actually the 100 year anniversary of when Mary our Mother appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal, asking them to spread devotion to Her Immaculate Heart and to pray the Rosary daily for peace, and for protection from wars, and the threat of Russia. We want peace and protection, not just on a global level, but in our own homes and in our own hearts. Pray the Rosary, try today, try this week. If you pray the Rosary every day, you will experience peace and find the path to heaven.

These are two great starts, either Scripture reflection or the Rosary. I've got some hand-outs at the entrances of church, one sheet per each for some specific tips on how to pray in this way.

So here we are at the new year of 2017. Behind us is all that happened in the past, our regrets, our failed resolutions, our anxieties and fears. While some of us may resolve in 2017 to get in shape, eat better, or organize the house, I hope we dont stop there. We can progress in overcoming our worry and fears and experience the source of true and lasting joy. Mary did this, by daily devoting hersellf to refllective prayer. She is our Mother and the Mother of God. If we allow such a wise mother to inspire us, whether through Scripture reflection or through the Rosary, or even both, 2017 will be a year of much joy, peace, and rejoicing, of diminished anxiety and overcome fear, no matter what difficulties may come our way.