January 01 2025 - Mary, the Holy Mother of God - Blessings in the New Year

 

Yesterday, at morning Mass, I considered how December 31 is a good day for looking back on the year—a good day for considering how God has been with us throughout in the joys and challenges of the year. 

So, as a little spiritual exercise yesterday, I went through my 2024 calendar, day by day, week by week, month by month, and considered the ways I experienced God and the ways God called me to service in the last year, and recalled some of those joys and challenges. 

Throughout 2024, there were masses, holy hours, anointings of the sick, rcia sessions, meetings with the grieving, funerals and burials, weddings, meals and visits to parishioners’ homes, meetings regarding our capital campaign and church sound system and other maintenance related issues. There were staff meetings, marriage and other sacramental preparation meetings, meetings where I offered spiritual direction, and meetings where I received spiritual direction, meetings for annulments, planning meetings, and then all of those wonderful parish events like our clam bake, Lenten simple soup dinner, and parish picnic. Events with the school, family gatherings, gatherings with brother priests, diocesan meetings, events, and liturgies. I was reminded how I climbed to the top of the bell tower for the eclipse on  April 8, and attended a friend’s music recital at Cleveland Institute of Music on April 24, how I had the great honor of sitting on jury duty, and the amazing Italian dinner I had with a priest friend prior to his reception of his doctoral degree. There was my 15th anniversary of priestly ordination, and the week in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress. 2024 was certainly a year of grace and  blessing. I even improved a little on my golf game, making my first eagle on the 9th hole over at little met. 

I really do recommend a similar exercise. Go through your past year. Consider the blessings. Thank God for the blessings that were evident, and the challenges, which in retrospect, could perhaps be considered as blessings in disguise.

Our readings on this Holy Day all speak of blessing. Our first reading from the book of Numbers contains a literal prayer of blessing. Aaron the brother of Moses was instructed to pray words of blessing over the people of Israel. Our psalm, sings to God asking God to extend his blessing upon us and to the end of the earth. Just like you can go through your personal calendar, one could flip through the pages of the bible to consider how God has blessed his people in every age—forming Israel, teaching and forming his people, corrected them, and preparing them for the birth of the Messiah.

On this Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, on this octave day of Christmas, we celebrate how God has blessed us, answering that petition for worldwide blessing through Mary, the Mother of Jesus. He has made Mary a blessing to all people—for the role she has played in our salvation and the role she continues to play, both in example and also as the most powerful of heavenly intercessors. We are blessed, we are better, for knowing her faithfulness and her love in bringing about the greatest blessing possible. 

As we prayed in our Collect prayer, “Through the fruitful virginity of Blessed Mary, God has bestowed on the human race the grace of eternal salvation”. There is no greater blessing than that, no greater gift, the grace of eternal salvation. And today the Church universal thanks God for her, through whom eternal salvation Himself was born. 

And as we celebrate how God made Mary a blessing for all people, on this first day of the calendar year, we consider how we, too are to be a blessing for others, every day this year. 

Again, going through my calendar, wasn’t just an examination of the record of events of the last year. Honestly, it was very moving to consider how many times God used others, yourselves included, to bless me, to shape me, to encourage and strengthen me, to correct me, and to simply show me the depths of His love and goodness. 

The saints recommend, not simply a yearly examination, but a daily examination—to grow in awareness of God’s presence and God’s blessing. At the end of the day, before bed, sit in a nice chair with the tv and social media off, and consider the conversations, the lessons, the unexpected joys and the mistakes. Thank God for the blessings and ask God’s mercy upon your faults. And to conclude, as priests and consecrated religious do, sing or recite a song to Mary, the salve regina, regina coeli, or a simply hail mary.

Like Mary, we are meant to contemplate the mystery of God in our hearts, that we like her may serve God as blessings for others for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Homily: Epiphany 2017 - The Light of Christ

In keeping with the ancient practice, following the proclamation of the Epiphany Gospel, I just chanted the announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts for this liturgical year. 

Before the age of mass produced calendars and smart phones, the chanting of the feasts was a practical necessity; now, we do it as a way of remaining rooted in our Catholic tradition; the light of faith, the light of our Catholic Tradition is something that we’ve inherited from ages past, and it’s up to us to keep the light of faith burning in this darkened age.

The light of reason, the light of faith, these are lights that do night shine automatically. It takes real effort: real prayer, real commitment to the truth of our faith, real faith formation and acts of charity and self-sacrifice that the light of Christ shines in our dark world. For, in many parts of the world, in Europe and here in the United States, places where the light of faith once burned quite brightly, that light is quickly darkening.

Pope Benedict, a few years into his papacy spoke of an eclipsing of light. “An eclipse of reason has taken place.  That man no longer uses his intellect in search of God, but is driven by his passions and desire for self-gratification…the sun is setting over an entire world.”

Addiction, pornography, Racial violence, greed, permissiveness of immorality, decadence: these evils darken our civilization as faith is abandoned, parents failing to pass on the light of faith to their children.

This darkening makes today’s feast so important. For the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of the light of God in the world, the light which began to shine first in the history of Israel, which was finally fully manifest at the birth of Jesus Christ, a light which the Catholic Church is called to manifest throughout the world.

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah acknowledged that though darkness covered the earth, light shined upon Israel. While all the world worshipped pagan gods and walked in pagan ways, Israel was chosen to be enlightened by God. They were given knowledge of the one true God, his ways and commandments.

Filled with this light, Israel was meant to be a beacon to the rest of the world: “a light to the Gentiles”, that all nations, all people would come to know the one true God. As we sang in our Psalm: “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.”

The light given to Israel was not meant for Israel alone, but was given for the good of the whole world. And so, we then heard in our Gospel, how the prophecy of universal adoration of God began to be fulfilled as magi from the east came to adore the newborn Christ child.

And St. Paul taught in the second reading how Christians are inheritors of that revelation, and as “stewards of God’s grace” Christians are called to make known that revelation to every generation to every corner of the earth.

If God’s light has been revealed…why is there so much darkness in the world? Why is there so much unbelief and faithlessness and division? With so much darkness in the world, many people do conclude that God doesn’t exist, that the Christian faith ought to be relegated to the past. Many in the younger generation believe that Christianity has nothing to say to them.

This feast certainly contains several challenging questions to us: do we allow his light to illuminate our whole life? Do I share his light as I should? Do I walk in his light as I should? Am I the bright, constant witness to Christ? Am I a clear and gentle witness to what is most important in life?

I am becoming more and more convinced that in order to share the light of Christ, we must turn ever more to the light of truth contained in the Holy Scriptures.

When we read the scriptures, God illuminates the dark corners of our life: he satisfies our doubts, he comforts us in our afflictions, he helps us to understand ourselves, and see ourselves as he sees us.  As Pope Benedict said, “In the light of the revelation made by God’s Word, the enigma of the human condition is definitively clarified.”

When we read the scriptures, the darkness of sadness and strife is pushed back, and we come to recognize that Christ s the one our hearts long for, he is the one whose beauty we long to see, he is the one whose truth we are meant to walk by, and whose goodness we are meant to share.

No matter what dark temptation or dark affliction we are experiencing, when we seek out God’s light in the scriptures, we will be illuminated. As Vatican II said, the Scriptures enlightens the mind, strengthens the will and fires the hearts of men and women with the love of God” (Dei Verbum).

A wonderful New Year’s resolution would be to spend time daily with God’s word, to familiarize yourself with the Bible, and to learn how to pray with the Scriptures.

Also, blessed chalk is be available at the church exits as well as the short ritual for blessing your homes for the new year.  By this act, we ask Christ’s blessing upon the home and those who live there and those who will visit.  By visibly marking our homes, we identify them as places where the light of Christ shines.

In a sense our homes are meant to be like the Christmas star, as the wise men followed the star to find Christ, those seeking Christ should be able to find Him in our homes. There are people out there who do not know Christ or do not know him as they should, who are meant to discover Christ in your homes.  The home is also meant to be like the stable of Bethlehem isn’t it? A place where Christ is honored and adored constantly. 

God’s love is the light, and in the end, the only light which can always illuminate a world grown dim. So let the light of Christ shine in your homes and in your hearts for the glory of God and salvation of souls.