Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God:  Lk 2:16-21.

 

New Year’s Day will always have special resonances for all of us. It is a day when we may look back over the year that has just passed. When we reflect on that year, we will all have memories. Some of them may be happy memories and others sad memories. New Year’s Day is also a day when we look ahead to the year that is before us. We may be conscious of certain things that we would like to do differently from how we did them last year. We may find ourselves setting some goals that we would like to follow through. In all kinds of ways, New Year’s Day can be a reflective time. It can be a time to take stock, to look back on where we have been, and to look forward to where we would like to be.

New Year’s Day also encourages us to reflect on our faith, the Lord and his place in our lives. It is a day to ask, ‘How can I grow in my relationship with the Lord?’ ‘How can I respond more generously to his call?’ ‘How might I find ways to nurture my faith or to live it more fully, more courageously?’ Every so often, we need to become more reflective about our faith, our relationship with the Lord, and how it is impacting our day-to-day lives. New Year’s Day is a good time for such reflection.

The gospel reading this morning presents Mary as a very reflective woman. We are told there that the shepherds went to Bethlehem and announced to all, including Mary, the message the angels had given them, which was, ‘Do not be afraid… I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ, the Lord’. The shepherds proclaimed the gospel to Mary and all who were with her. According to the gospel reading, Mary’s response to what the shepherd’s said was a contemplative response. ‘She treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart’. It was as if there was too much in what the shepherds said to take in at once. The shepherds were conveying to Mary that her child was none other than the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, whose other titles were Saviour and Lord. Here was good news of great joy, not just for Mary but for all the people. There was much to ponder there, a great deal to treasure. At the very beginning of his gospel, Luke is presenting Mary as a reflective, thoughtful, contemplative woman. Indeed, a little further on in that same chapter, Luke describes her in a very similar way. When the boy Jesus went missing in Jerusalem and his parents, after much searching, eventually found him, he said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ In response to those questions of Jesus, Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph ‘did not understand what he said to them’ and that ‘his mother treasured all these things in her heart’. Once again, there was much to ponder upon in what Jesus said. The meaning of his words was not immediately clear. Just as in the case of the words of the angels to the shepherds, the words of Jesus to his parents needed to be mulled over and reflected upon.

When it comes to the Lord and his relationship with us and ours with him, there is always a great deal to ponder, to reflect upon, and to treasure in our hearts. Reading the gospels, for example, is not just like reading any other book. Because the gospels are God’s words in human words, there is a depth to them that cries out to be explored. The word of God can speak to us in all kinds of different ways. The same passage of Scripture may speak to us in one way at one time and in another way at another time. It is the Lord who speaks to us through the Scriptures and the Lord has different things to say to us at different times. The portrayal of Mary in today’s gospel reading encourages us to keep pondering the word and to keep treasuring it in our hearts. In that sense, we are all called to be contemplatives. Like Mary, we try to dispose ourselves to hearing what the Lord is saying to us as we go through life.

 

May this new year help us to be pure and holy like our Heavenly Mother by remaining faithful to our family prayers and Bible reading and finding time every day to ponder on God’s word as to how that can transform us and let the word become flesh in us as it did in Mary.