The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

 “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Lk 2:19

Hail the beginning of a New Year!

January 1 has an almost carnival-like atmosphere to it.

To celebrate it, we do all sorts of things: watch football games, drink champagne, toast new beginnings, wear crazy hats, set off fireworks, kiss and hug old friends, travel to visit extended families, and on and on.

It’s the time of year when we roll out the old and bring in the new – even to the point of dusting off the treadmill in the corner that became nothing more than a resting place for dusty potted plants.

It’s the time for making new resolutions, new promises to ourselves.

But in the midst of all this excitement and hope and partying comes a reminder:

a baby lying in a manger – a baby whose birth, and life, so amazed not just a scraggly group of shepherds, but billions of people down through the ages who’ve been brought to their knees by the sheer, wondrous beauty of his birth.

That child, Jesus, causes us to call time out on the field, if you will, and spend a few moments in the midst of our various celebrations to make perhaps the most important resolution of all: the resolution to become reborn and renewed.

Luke’s gospel asks us to do it this way: in the midst of all of our New Year resolutions, remember Mary – remember the Mary that “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”   

“All these words” certainly changed Mary. Consider what she had to “ponder:” an angel telling her she is to bear God’s own son; a census causing her to travel to Bethlehem on a donkey’s back; a manger filled with straw intended only for animals; a group of shepherds who are “amazed.”

She had to be asking herself: “What does all this mean?” “How will I cope?”

In her heart, Mary’s ultimate answer to these questions was singular: Trust. Trust in the God she fully believed in. Trust that God meant what He said through the angel: “Rejoice, O highly favored one, the Lord is with you.”

In the Hail Mary prayer, we use the words “full of grace” to describe Mary. But the Greek word used in Luke’s original writing actually means “favored to the greatest possible degree” – the strongest of all conceivable words to show how much God loved Mary and treasured her openness, and her willingness to trust.

Abiding in such trust, Mary became the ultimate disciple, the total follower of Jesus. She is the one who surrendered her ego, who quieted her fears, who made the decision to trust – even though she had little knowledge of what was going on. In her wildest dreams, this poor, humble woman could never have imagined how significant her “yes” would be in human history.

In the language of New Year’s celebrations, Mary made a resolution – the resolution to open her heart to the amazing, enlivening fullness of grace; the resolution to voice a wholehearted “yes.”

In today’s Gospel, Luke challenges us to do the same.

Luke asks us to make our hearts like Mary’s … to resolve to notice the angels that appear in our lives; to resolve to welcome the shepherds of today – the poorest of the poor; to resolve to change our hearts into hearts always open to new possibilities, new beginnings, new dreams.

On this first day of the New Year, let us resolve to make the heart of Mary our own. Let us resolve, let us promise ourselves, that we will clean out a room in our hearts so there will always be space for God to be wrapped in the swaddling clothes of our love and our trust – a space within us in which the Child Jesus can be re-born.

Happy New Year!

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.

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12/29/16