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Dear Friend, Often when we part company we wish each other: ‘Goodbye!’,
which is a short form for ‘God be with you!’, which really is a blessing.
Sometimes we say it as straight: “God Bless you!” In fact everything that
comes to us and everyone we encounter in life, is a blessing in one way or
another. Sometimes what we think are disasters turn out to be blessings in
disguise. We are invited at the beginning of the New Year to bless ourselves
and one another with God! Have a
blessed New Year counting your blessings! Fr. Jude Botelho |
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In
this first reading God tells Moses that the priests, sons of Aaron will give
a blessing to the sons and daughters of Israel who have kept the laws and
commandments of the Lord. This same blessing will be repeated by David and
Solomon over the people. The whole
community of Israel will benefit from the blessing of God and his protection.
The prayer also asks God to be present to his people, to let his face shine
on them and grant them divine favour and his peace. This ‘peace’ includes
wholeness and well being, both material and spiritual. So in blessing them
the priests put something of God, his very presence, into the people. We too
constantly need the blessing of God, his presence and ‘peace’ in us all
through the New Year. In the second reading from Paul’s letter to the
Galatians, Paul is writing to refute some teachers in Galatia who held that
to embrace Christ pagans had to convert to Judaism first and only them could
they be baptized. Paul insists that we are saved by Jesus alone and so we are
not to observe the old Jewish practices. Just as a child by adoption had to
wait for the stipulated time before he or she inherited what was left to him,
at the appropriate time God sent his son Jesus Christ so that we might inherit
what God had promised all those who accepted Jesus. Through Jesus we are then
adopted children of our Father and we have the privilege of calling God our
‘Abba’, our ‘Father’, the greatest blessing and privilege we can ever inherit
in life. Get me a mother! In the infancy narrative Luke’s had told us how Mary and Joseph had
journeyed to Bethlehem to register themselves, and how Jesus was born in
Bethlehem in a stable and his parents wrapped him in swaddling clothes and
laid him in a manger. The manger was the feeding place for the animals and
Jesus was laid in the manger, because he had come to feed mankind and nourish
his people by being the Word of God made flesh and the Bread of life. We are
also told that the first people to hear the good news are the simple lowly
shepherds, perhaps because Jesus comes as the Good Shepherd who will look
after and care for his sheep. After they are given the good news by the
angels, we are told that believing the news the shepherds hurry with haste to
see for themselves what has been revealed to them. We are told that they
hurried, just as we are told that when Mary hears the good news about her
cousin Elizabeth, she hurried over the country side to visit and help her
cousin in her need. Jesus, later in his preaching, stresses the urgency of
responding to the call of God, to the good news that he had come to share.
Our response has to be now, today, and not tomorrow, when it might be too
late. The shepherds look for and find the infant exactly as they have been
told and they share what has been told to them about Jesus by the angels.
They make know, they share, they reveal to Mary and Joseph and the others
what had been told to them by the angels. Earlier, Mary and Zachariah had
been told who this child was and what he would do when he came into the
world. Now the shepherds reveal who this new born child is and his mission in
the world. All that Mary experienced and was told by the angel and by the
shepherds, she listened to and tried to understand in the depth of her heart.
“Unlike the shepherds who are excited and talk about what they have heard and
seen, Mary is motionless, silent and still and ponders all these things in
her heart. God’s word needs to be listened to, reflected upon, pondered over
in the depth of our being, and also shared with others. According to Jewish
tradition Jewish boys, were circumcised on the eight day, consecrated to God
and accepted into the Jewish community as rightful members of the clan. Jesus
too was circumcised and given the name ‘Jesus’, the name given to him before
his conception. His name means: ‘God saves’. There is power in the name of
Jesus and invoking his name can be a great blessing to us, each time we call
upon him. He is as close as the mention of his name! What’s in a name? Names are powerful things. Being able to name something gives you a
certain amount of power over it. This has been true for centuries, and
certainly has found its way into our culture today in any number of ways. The
young boy, new in a school, comes home to parents and reports that kids are
picking on him. But the parents and teacher are helpless to do anything about
it until the child can learn the names of those guilty. Being able to name
your assailant is part of the process of getting justice. A young mom tries
to calm her child, fearful and trembling in her arms. Helping the child to
name her fears is part and parcel of a parent’s task in such moments. In
Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Earthsea” novels, several times the hero attempts to
“name the enemy” only to discover it is his own fear. It is no coincidence
that in the Harry Potter books, few people will speak the name “Lord
Voldemort.” Those that do, like Harry, seem less vulnerable to his evil
powers. Certainly in these days post 9/11, naming our fears has been the key
to calming our lives. There is something about “naming” things out there that
bring them to a human level. People also have gotten a lot of power and
prestige by attaching themselves to the names of powerful people. We invoke
names of others when we want to add weight to the things that we say.
Certainly, the giving of a name can have a profound effect on a child’s life
thereafter. Some names have innate power in our culture. Other names denote
plain or mundane attributes. What we name something or someone will inhabit
their psyche and place in the world for the rest of their lives. Certainly
this is why certain names have dropped off of our cultures list of most
popular. Luke
Boeman in ‘Everyday Sunday Sermons’ "If
Mary plays an unobtrusive role in today’s gospel story, she is nevertheless
essential to it. She is the centre towards which all gravitates – shepherds
and the people of Jerusalem. By a subtle play of light and shade, these
people show Mary in relief. The excitement and outpourings of the shepherds
serve to underline the astonished silence of the townspeople of Bethlehem,
who neither stir nor speak. As for Mary motionless and silent, she contrasts
both with the shepherds and townspeople. She too must be amazed, yet she is
self-possessed. She is no introvert, quite the contrary: she is fully
attentive to what she sees and hears. She takes in everything with the firm
conviction that it concerns her intensely.
She ‘ponders these things in her heart;, Luke tells us. The biblical
context of this expression is clear –namely she kept and pondered in her mind
what the shepherds told her. She prepares herself to come to terms with the
future, -her child’s future and her own. The two could not be separated.
Doubtless she understood all this well only when she stood by the cross. And
after the resurrection her understanding was deepened. On the threshold of a
new year, in which God will be with us, there is much food for reflection and
prayer for us in Mary and in her faith. We too must learn to recognize the
Lord and to give him thanks.” - Glenstal Bible Missal Woman of the Year Lauren
Bacall once starred in a long-playing musical comedy entitled Woman of the
Year. She played the role of a celebrated television talk show hostess, Tess
Harding, who knows and interviews all the in-people like the President, the
Pope, Fidel Castro, and others. When Tess was selected by NOW, the National
Organization for Women, for their Woman of the Year award, she sang a song by
the same title. -Today we honor another woman as we begin a New Year. Her
record is unbroken and unparalleled. For almost two thousand times in a row
she has been singled out as the Church’s Woman of the Year. She is Mary, the
Mother of God. She was not a celebrity like the fictional Tess, but Mary was
a saint, she was selected by God himself, and her son is Jesus, the incarnate
Word of God. Mary won’t win any awards this year, she won’t be seen on
television, but can we at least live our lives by the way we practice her
virtues? Albert
Cylwicki in ‘His Word Resounds’ May we discover Jesus and Mary as our greatest blessings in
life! Fr. Jude
Botelho |
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Other Sunday Homily Websites Daily Reflections Immaculate Heart Retreat Center Gospel Commentary from Ireland Daily Scripture |
Recent
Sunday Reflections Feast of the Holy Family 30-Dec. 2007 Fourth Sunday of Advent 23-Dec. 2007 Third
Sunday of Advent 16-Dec. 2007 Second Sunday of Advent 09-Dec. 2007 First Sunday of Advent 02-Dec. 2007 Thirty-Fourth Sunday of the Year 25-Nov. 2007
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