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Number 6: 22-27 Galatians 4: 4-7 Luke 2: 16-21
At various times in our lives, we are given the opportunity to start over, to begin again. It happens when a new relationship is started, a new friendship develops. It happens when a child is born, or perhaps a child goes off to college or moves out of home. It happens when a new job is started, a new school is attended, or a move is made into a new house or new neighborhood. It happens when retirement comes, a spouse is lost, or illness or old age begins to set limitations. Life, for any of us, is rarely static. Although, at times, life may seem routine or boring or always the same, in the overall view, in the larger picture, it simply is not.
Sometimes, events like these, or similar ones, can be frightening, because so much is unknown. At other times, these events can be moments of great hope, great expectation, great possibilities. What was, what had been, is no longer. The mistakes of the past can be learned from, can even be forgotten. We can start fresh, we can try again, with a new approach to ourselves, to others, to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The most common or typical of these “new” beginnings, is today, the New Year. It happens, whether we like it or not. Sometimes it may happen a lot sooner, a lot faster than in the past. It happens today and is a reminder and an opportunity to review the past and make an effort to start over afresh.
As a Church, as believers in the love of God that is so great that God partners with us in life in the person of Jesus Christ who shared our human condition, we begin the New Year thinking of Mary, the human mother of Jesus. She is the human vehicle, the human means, the human instrument by which God took on our humanity. Considering Mary of Nazareth on this day fits into the pattern of life which we experience. It follows the pattern of the “new” - the new experience, the new situation, the new opportunity, that today, the New Year, can represent. This is so because Mary, as was stated in the prayer I said a few moments ago in collecting our thoughts, represents a new beginning for all of creation by being the human person through whom we were found worthy to receive the very author of life, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.
Like the gratitude that we might have for the different new opportunities life offers us to start over in a new relationship, a new job, a new school, new circumstances of any kind, we take time today to express gratitude that Mary took on the role of mother of Jesus. We are urged today to be aware of the possibilities that are open to us in so close a relationship with God, the source of life, because of Mary. These possibilities are before us today, not only because God became part of human history in the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, but because the same God us lovingly present to us in the Eucharist in which we join today.
We can begin again today, not only a New Year, 2012, but a renewal of our relationship with God. We begin again knowing, as Paul tells us, that we are children of God who loves us like a Father, a Father we call “Abba,” or Dad, or Pop. We can begin again with a sense of gratitude that one of us, another human being like us, took on the role of introducing God into our world and, like her, we can reflect on the effect and the possibilities this fact represents for us, pondering them in our hearts, the very center, the very essence of what we are. We can begin again with a prayer, a heartfelt prayer: that we might be blessed by our God in every aspect, every part of our lives; that we might live this year in such a way that the closeness and kindness of God will be more greatly appreciated; and that we might experience more and more in this coming year, peace - peace in our minds, peace in our hearts, peace in our spirits. It is a peace that is offered to us in a genuine and true relationship with our loving and gracious God.