Let’s get our acts together! Jesus Christ is the source of our celebration, the source of peace and justice, the source of all that is good in life.
A homily from New Year’s
(the Octave of Christmas & the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God based on readings from
Numbers 6:22–27, Psalm 67, Galatians 4:4–7, and Luke 2:16–21.
These readings are available at the USCCB website.
The new year has not yet begun and already I am overwhelmed, but in a good way.
Today we celebrate the Octave Day of Christmas; the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God; and the World Day of Prayer for Justice and Peace. It also New Year’s Eve, and who knows what else. There are resolutions to be made, parties to attend, parties to recover from, parades and football to watch. They are all marked by a sign of newness, of a fresh start. They can all come together, too, in a wonderful way. And even if they come together in a way that seems less than wonderful, we can still benefit from them.
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior unifies all of these themes. He is unbreakably linked to Christmas, to Mary his Mother, to justice, and to peace. Jesus, our Lord is the source of all of our new beginnings. Jesus Christ is our fresh start, and so we celebrate!
I think we should all begin right now to get our acts together – together with God, together with our families, together with everyone around us with whom we share a “common [global] home”.[1]
This Changes Everything – A New Foundation, Our Relationship with God
Our first reading recounts a beautiful blessing, but I never thought of its significance until recently. First of all, it is the Lord himself who gave us this blessing. It isn’t us simply the people asking for things, it is exactly how God wishes to bless us. He wishes us happiness – he blesses us. He takes care of our material needs – he keeps us. He seeks relationship with us – his face shines upon us. He wills our deepest good – he gives us peace. Those of us who have even one friend or family member like that count ourselves fortunate. And yet, that this the relationship that God desires with us!
In Jesus, God takes on human flesh. He becomes one of us while remaining fully God. And through baptism, he offers us adoption as beloved daughters and sons of the Lord Most High.[2] This image of adoption is real. This adoption is meaningful. Back in Jesus’s day, if you were adopted it meant that you became fulling integrated into your new family. However the biology went, your adopted family was your family going back to the beginning of time. Very much like our “forever families” today, except that this adoption is with God himself! In Jesus day, adoption meant that all your outstanding debts were pay by your new family. Jesus, of course, does this. He redeems us – his sacrifice is the satisfaction of a something owed. Adoption changed your status forever, just like it does today. We, by our baptism, are brought into a family relationship with God and are joined to one another in the mystic Body of Christ. The ultimate sign of that unity will come in a few minutes as we receive Jesus Christ who is truly present for us in the Eucharist.
The coming of Jesus Christ in the manger changes everything! That is why we celebrate the Octave of Christmas. Christmas is so important that we celebrate each day as though it were Christmas Day for a full week – from Sunday to Sunday this year, eight days in a row!
Jesus: The Christ, Our Lord, the Source of Peace and Justice
The shepherds proclaimed the news that they had been given. They proclaimed news of great joy to all the people that a savior and messiah had come for all people. All people. For everyone. This is why today we pray to Jesus, the source of all justice and all peace, that we may experience both in our time. And we really do need it. As adopted children of God, and as members of the mystical Body of Christ, we recognize that none of us are saved alone. We pray that all people, including every one of us, can recognize each other as family in Christ Jesus, and that justice and peace may prevail.[3]
Pondering – the Benefits of Confusion
Even today’s celebration of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, centers on Jesus. Mary is the mother of Jesus, but it is the fact that Jesus is God that makes this a solemnity. If you are picking up on the theme that everything we are, everything we do, and everything for which we pray comes together in Jesus, then the message is getting through. When we live our entire lives seeking nothing but union with Jesus and the will of God, we come the closest to realizing the goal of every conceivable New Year’s resolution. We come the closest to realizing our full potential!
And Mary held all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart. I find these words comforting. I recently learned that this idea of reflecting in the original biblical language has a sense of an internal debate. Mary was promised a child “[who would] be great and [would] be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God [would] give him the throne of David his father, and [who would] rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there [would] be no end.”[4] A great king – that was the promise. The reality? A drafty stable. Mary had a lot to reflect upon that night and in the years that followed. Her life was full of sorrows, yet she is the source of our hope.[5] We don’t know from the biblical text how she felt about things. Almost every Christmas we hear that song, “Mary did you know?” I am convinced that her answer would have been “Not really. At least not at the time.” We do know that she remained faithful at all times, even in the very difficult ones. So it is with us. We have much to reflect upon when our own situation is at odds with what we think it should be. Like Mary, we can reflect in the presence of Christ and continue on in faith in the Lord Jesus.
We can, beginning right now, get our acts together by bringing all of our acts under the Lordship of Christ. We can, beginning right now, begin one fresh and faithful start. One in the sense that we can unite all that we do and all that we reflect upon with our Lord Jesus Christ. We are, after all, his beloved daughters and sons. Faithful in the sense that we place our plans in the hands of Jesus, and follow his will for our lives. As we bring our will into alignment with his perfect plan for our lives we can better reflect, better understand our situation, and redirect our efforts as necessary.
We can enjoy new life. The kind of newness that only Christ can bring into any new year. Happy New Year!
“Let us get our acts together by bringing our every act under the Lordship of Christ. Let’s align our will to God’s will!”
[1] Cf Pope Francis, Laudato Sí, Encyclical Letter on the Care for Our Common Home, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015. This effort at a unified, integrated existence in which our relationship with God and fellow humans bears fruit must include our relationship to all of God’s creation, the environment as it is more commonly referred.
Link to Encyclical[2] The phrase “beloved daughters” is a key theme in Walking with Purpose, an excellent woman’s program created and run by Lisa Brenninkmeyer. www.WalkingWithPurpose.com. I have appropriated it with good reason.
[3] Cf Pope Francis, Message for the 56th World Day of Peace, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, December 8, 2022.
Link to Pope Francis’ message[4] Luke 2:32-33.
[5] Mater Dolorosa, source of our hope, pray for us.