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Scripture Reflection
New Year’s Day 2009

Scripture Readings:
Numbers 6: 22-27
Psalm 67
Galatians 4: 4-7
Luke 2: 16-21

There are many memories and themes that converge in our liturgy for New Year’s. Obviously we are concluding one calendar year and beginning a new one, so as we pray together we take time to remember the significant events of the past year and to pray for God’s blessings in 2009. We also remember that January 1 is World Day of Peace in the Church. Pope Benedict has issued a special message for this day entitled “Fighting Poverty to Build Peace.” And so we pray for peace, remembering all of those places throughout the world where people’s lives are torn apart by violence, including the Holy Land. Officially, in our liturgy we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God. We remember Mary’s singular role in the story of salvation and call upon her with a title that was very important to Christians in the early Church.

It strikes me that in many ways the person of Mary unites all of these different themes and helps us to focus our prayer this evening. The hymn attributed to Mary, the Magnificat, celebrates the powerful working of God’s grace in her life: “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.” We believe that Mary’s life and her person were marked by a distinctive greatness. As a famous theologian once put it, Mary is the “most perfectly redeemed” of all human persons. God’s redeeming, life-giving grace shaped her life in such a profound way that she was even preserved from the presence and power of sin.

Distinctive greatness is a funny thing; it can have diverse effects on us. Sometimes our encounter with such greatness can be overpowering and even off-putting. It can serve only to remind us of our own limitations and lack of greatness. I remember as a teenager playing in a basketball game against a great ballplayer. He went on to play for a prominent college team, have a leading role in the national championship game and play in the NBA. I think that he is still working as some kind of coach or scout in the NBA. We had heard the scouting reports and knew how good he was before the game, and he proved to be just as great a ballplayer as everybody had said. Playing against him was for me a not-so-subtle reminder of the limitations of my basketball talent. It wasn’t pretty! It was an overpowering and very humbling experience.

But sometimes we experience distinctive greatness that does not overpower or diminish us but, rather, lifts us up. It ennobles us. Some years ago when I was teaching in Boston, a friend gave me two tickets to hear the Boston Symphony on a night in which Yitzhak Perlman was playing a Beethoven violin concerto. I remember watching as this disabled virtuoso slowly made his way across the stage with the braces that enable him to walk. After the initial applause there was silence, as he backed his way to the riser on which the soloist’s chair is located, lifted himself up and took his violin in hand. Then he launched into a flawless performance of that concerto. It was an experience of distinctive greatness that elevated all those who were present; it brought you into deeper touch with your own dignity as a human being. It was an ennobling experience.

The singular greatness of Mary is of the second kind. It is always ennobling; it elevates each one of us. In the gospel, we listen to Luke’s account of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. Luke tells us that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” This courageous woman of faith was receptive to the presence and action of the Spirit in her life, uttering her yes to God’s plan of salvation, even when it interfered with her own plans for her life. Her life was turned completely upside down. Mary’s “yes” to the angel meant that her life became enveloped in mystery, in the mystery of God’s saving love becoming enfleshed in human history. Mary stood before this mystery as a woman of profound faith, yet she must have wondered how it would all turn out. There must have been times in which the darkness of mystery seemed to outshine the light. And yet she treasured “these things” in her heart and reflected on them, trusting that God was at work in a way that transcended human comprehension. Mary shows us that at its heart human dignity is discovered and expressed in relationship – in relationship to the God in whose image we have been created. It is by giving of herself fully to God that Mary lives out the essence of human dignity.

In his message for World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict reflects on the ways in which the abject poverty which cripples the lives of so many people in our world is a contradiction to human dignity and an impediment to the achievement of a true and lasting peace. He offers his reflections with an awareness of the forces of globalization, which he observes is a very ambiguous phenomenon. As he puts it, “Globalization eliminates certain barriers but is still able to create new ones.” Benedict says that every form of externally imposed poverty has at its root a lack of respect for the transcendent dignity of the human person. He invites all disciples of Jesus and all people of good will “to expand their hearts to meet the needs of the poor and to take whatever practical steps are possible in order to help them.”

The pope’s message for this day echoes what we learn from the life and the discipleship of Mary. It is a message that reaffirms the inherent dignity that every person has been given as a child of a loving Creator. Saint Paul exhorted the Christians in Galatia never to forget their own worth as sons and daughters of God, the God to whom they cried out in the Spirit, “Abba, Father.” He reminded them that they were not slaves but children of God in Christ, and that they must live their lives out of that truth.
As we pray together at the beginning of a new year, you and I are invited to recall the dignity we have as daughters and sons of a loving Creator. This human dignity was restored through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. We are challenged to think, act and choose from the perspective of that God-given dignity. That is the way that Mary lived her life, and her example is meant to be ennobling for each one of us. Each of us is summoned to enter into this new year with an abiding awareness that he or she is truly a child of God. And we are challenged to recognize and affirm the God-given dignity of every person we meet, particularly the most vulnerable of our world, those people whose dignity is so often impugned. In the words of the pope, we are called to demonstrate a profound respect for the transcendent dignity of all human beings, at whatever stage of life they may be.

Christ thinks so much of us that he offers himself to us in the wonderful sacrament of the Eucharist. He comes to commune with us and in so doing he raises us up, just as Mary was elevated by the grace of God in her life. As we approach the table of the Lord, may we pledge to live as God’s sons and daughters and to respect the transcendent dignity of every person whom we meet.

Fr. Robin Ryan, cp

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