Homily for Monday, 1 January 2024– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

Sisters and brothers, Happy New Year and a happy Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God!

Our Church has also celebrated New Year’s Day as the World Day of Peace since Pope St. Paul VI first connected this day to an ongoing prayer for and reflection on peace in our world in 1967. Peace is much richer than the mere absence of conflict. Perhaps the absence of conflict sometimes (if not frequently) can mask the absence of true peace in our world and in our relationships.

Since Mary’s time, Jesus’ time, and well before then, since the time the Book of Numbers from which we hear God’s blessing of peace through Aaron today was written, peace has been based on the multidimensional Hebrew word, shalom. Shalom can mean a simple, friendly greeting, like, “Hello,” “goodbye,” or “farewell.” It means peace in the fullest sense possible, the desire for wholeness, well-being, harmony, for ourselves and everybody.

From when I was an elementary school-aged child, I remember the Hebrew traditional song we learned in music class:

Shalom, chaverim. Shalom, chaverim.

Shalom, shalom.

L’hitra’ot, l’hitra’ot

Shalom, shalom.

Farewell (or greetings), my friends.

Farewell, my friends. Peace! Peace!

Until we meet again, until we meet again.

Peace! Peace!

Aaron’s blessing of the people of Israel that we hear today in Numbers is similar in spirit to this little folk song. Aaron blesses the people of Israel in God’s words to him:

The LORD bless you and keep you,

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace [shalom].

Those of us who attend the 9:30 am Mass here at St. Joseph’s College with the Children’s Liturgy of the Word will be familiar with this blessing of Aaron. Our music ministry has been singing a lovely arrangement of it when our children go out for the Children’s Liturgy downstairs.

I have said that shalom, peace, is a multidimensional word. It is a word that suggests movement. Shalom can never be static or stationary. In the Book of Numbers, the Aaronic blessing, shalom begins as a gift of God, a gift we receive from looking upon the face of God, from God turning God’s face to look upon us and, in a word from Aaron’s blessing, shining on us.

Few natural events suggest peace—God’s love for us, for the world; calm, wholeness, well-being, harmony—than a sunrise. This is the first image in my mind when I think of God’s face “shining” upon us. Yet lately, often as soon as I picture a sunrise in my mind and connect it to God’s shalom, my mind is haunted by images from half a world away—say, on the evening news, from war zones like those of Gaza or Ukraine: Cities reduced to rubble. Yet the sun rises over the ruins, the loss of life. These images drive home for me how far we are—how far humanity is—from the peace God wills for the world. They emphasize for me how far we are from the shalom with which God shone his face on Aaron and Moses for the people of Israel; the shalom for which God sent his only-begotten Son into our world, born as one like us of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. But still, far as we are from God’s perfection of shalom, God makes the sun rise over us, even over our ruins, our anti-shalom.

If God’s shalom is to be effective in our world, God invites us to do two things with it: First, treasure it, ponder it in our hearts and, second, go out “with haste,” with a joyful urgency, to hand it on to people we encounter. Shalom cannot stand pat if it is to be effective in our world in need of it; it must be actively put into motion!

Mary, Mother of God, Luke says to us today, “treasured all [the] words” of the shepherds “and pondered them in her heart.” This is the second of three times in which Luke’s account of Jesus’ infancy describes Mary as treasuring or pondering the mysteries of God’s shalom as they unfold. And each time Mary profoundly treasures or ponders is when perplexing, even frightening, peace-disrupting events are taking place around her.

First, the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she “will conceive in [her] womb and bear a son,” whom she is to name Jesus. Luke says that Mary ponders “what sort of greeting this might be.” Second is Mary’s encounter with the shepherds in today’s Gospel reading. By the time the shepherds have reached “Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger,” it seems that they have already told everybody they could “what had been told them about this child.” They had organized the baby shower, done the “gender reveal,” and everything, all before Mary had had a chance to breathe, to meet these excitable shepherds for the first time. Still, Mary treasures and ponders shalom, calm, wholeness, well-being, harmony at her very core. And, a third time, when Mary and Joseph find the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, teaching and listening to the teachers, after three days of frantic searching, again Mary keeps “all these things in her heart.”

Mary is the master of the first movement of shalom, treasuring and pondering. For the shepherds’ part, in today’s Gospel reading they are masters of the second movement of shalom, going with haste—with a joyful urgency—to communicate shalom once they have received it. The shepherds’ setting out “with haste to Bethlehem” and then returning just as quickly to their fields, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen,” echoes Mary’s own action earlier in Luke’s Gospel of going “with haste” to visit Elizabeth when Mary learns that Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist at the same time she is pregnant with Jesus. Mary is Mother of God, the God-bearer in both these movements of shalom: Treasuring-pondering and going out with haste, actively bearing shalom to the world.

The shepherds, Joseph the husband of Mary, and especially Mary, whom we celebrate today as Mother of God, are master communicators of shalom. They are models for us of how we can be God-bearers in the sense of peace-bearers, shalom-bearers to our world. For us to be consistent bearers, communicators of shalom in our world, in our relationships, households, among our friends, in our places of work and leisure, in our Church can be challenging.

I find it interesting that, in his Message for the World Day of Peace this year, Pope Francis reflects as deeply as he does on the effects of new and ever-developing technologies—in particular artificial intelligence—on peace in our world and our human relationships. “Progress in science and technology,” Pope Francis says, “insofar as it contributes to greater order in human society and greater fraternal communion and freedom… leads to the betterment of humanity and the transformation of the world.”

How science, technologies like AI, the media of social communications lead “to the betterment of humanity and the transformation of the world” depends on how we use them, regulate them toward “the integral development of all individuals and peoples.” Scientific and technological progress can bear great promise, but also great risk. Pope Francis says, and I think this is easy to see, that science and technology, the ways we communicate and gain knowledge, pose challenges not only for any understanding of the human person as sacred but also social. These pose challenges in ethics: Political, social, economic; challenges in the areas of international law and the resolution of armed conflict when nations create weapons that can cause greater destruction more remotely than ever before. Progress in science, technology, communication pose challenges for education, for upholding especially the God-given dignity of the poor and people in need, for alleviating poverty and need, for protection of the natural environment.

How are we, this community of faith here at St. Joseph’s College, to manage all this? Understandably, maybe many or most of us feel powerless to effect any good against great global dangers to human well-being, human relationships, human life. But we can start small, local. We can start by helping the poor when we can. We can start by consuming less of what we do not need to consume. We can start by challenging ourselves to think critically about the information we absorb from media; as Pope Francis asks, “What are the social and ethical aspects of the development and [our] uses of technology”? We can start by challenging ourselves to one or two simple acts of kindness a day if we are not already doing this.

We can start by imitating the way of Mary, Mother of God, of Joseph, of the shepherds: First, treasure and ponder. How am I—how are we—being called to be bearers of peace, shalom, to our world and in our human relationships? Second, go “with haste”: If we have peace, kindness, mercy, calm, truth, hope, love to communicate, do not hesitate to communicate it, by word or the simplest of actions, like a friendly smile!

And, most important of all, pray, all of us, for shalom in our relationships, our world. That is the prayer God gave Aaron to pray for the ancient people of Israel. That is the prayer of Mary, Mother of God, for us:

Shalom, chaverim… Peace, my friends.

The LORD bless you and keep you,

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Homily for Wednesday, 1 January 2020– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Octave Day of Christmas

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 4, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

This homily was given at St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make his face to shine upon you

and be gracious to you,

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

This prayer with which the LORD asks Aaron, through Moses, to bless the people of Israel in the Book of Numbers, in the reading we have heard today, is maybe one of the most recognizable blessings in the Jewish or Christian traditions; in our Bible. But what is peace? With what kind of peace was Aaron to bless his people as he and Moses led them through the desert back to their homeland, Israel?

The Hebrew word for “peace” in this Aaronic or “priestly blessing” of Numbers is, I am sure, a word many of us have heard before: Shalom. But is shalom not one of those notoriously difficult words from an ancient language to translate into a current language like English? Shalom may mean “peace,” in a sense, though, that is much richer than the absence of a dispute or of war. It may mean anything from wishing somebody wholeness or prosperity to a simple hello or even goodbye.

“The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom.” This blessing of Aaron has several echoes throughout our Scriptures and our Mass. In John’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus blesses his disciples with a prayer for them reminiscent of Aaron’s prayer for the people of Israel in Numbers: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.” And then, in the same Gospel, the risen Jesus greets the disciples three different times: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

In a few moments here, we will echo these words of Jesus, which are in turn an echo of God’s voice through Aaron to his people: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you… Shalom be with you.” In this way, we will exchange a sign of peace just before we receive communion, shalom given for us in the form of bread and wine. And then we will be sent forth from here at the end of this celebration: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”… to be shalom to our world in profound need of our peace as a people of God.

Is it not appropriate, then, that each year, on January 1, New Year’s Day, in addition to this liturgical celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, as Church we also celebrate this day as the World Day of Peace? We have, I think, a lot to celebrate each year on this World Day of Peace, New Year’s Day, Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Our world becomes more peaceful year by year: Fewer wars; more respect for freedom of thought, freedom of religious faith, and other basic human rights and freedoms; more governments and forms of government that uphold these human rights.

Still, our world is far from perfectly at peace, much less at shalom that is so much more than the absence of conflict; shalom that is peace only possible for us through God. Parts of our world still remain mired in war; still send record numbers of people fleeing from violence and abuse, in search of peace. Households, families, marriages still experience brokenness; shalom still eludes us at this most foundational level of any healthy human society.

Yet still we (rightly) celebrate as we pray for shalom; for peace. And we connect this celebration of and prayer for peace with a celebration of Mary as Mother of God. So what might Mary, Mother of God, have to do with peace, in our world, among and within nations, or within households and families? Let me suggest that our celebration of this Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, has a lot to do with peace; I will go so far as to say that a healthy Christian devotion to Mary is essential for our peace; for shalom.

Our Gospel today, from Luke, shows us this essential connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary and peace; shalom. When the shepherds first arrive at the scene of our Lord’s birth, we might imagine their excitement and the excitement and amazement of everybody present with them. Luke’s Gospel says in fact that, as the shepherds “made known what had been told them about this child… all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

All this excitement, activity, and even amazement is a good thing, especially this time of year, is it not? Yet (and maybe we can all relate to what I am about to say) is this Christmastime not one of the more exhausting times of the year? Amid all the activity, we need time to rest; to pray; to celebrate with joy, yet still to be at peace. So, after Luke describes the excited joy of the shepherds, everybody’s amazement “at what the shepherds” had to say “about this child,” Jesus, Luke turns our attention toward Mary. Luke says that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

My sisters and brothers, let me suggest that these two verbs, “treasured” and “pondered,” are most essential to the Gospel we have just heard. They are essential for our peace, in its fullest sense of shalom. Amid the noise, the excitement, the activity, the words of the shepherds, her own probable exhaustion at having just brought a child into the world, of all the people in our Gospel account today, Mary is the most “at peace.” And she teaches us something central to our own being “at peace”: Treasuring and pondering.

But to treasure and ponder as Mary does is not to hold onto the joy of this celebration of the Lord’s birth as if it is ours to keep to ourselves in a selfish way. The joy of this celebration has been given to us by God through Mary, a young woman God chose and preserved from sin in order to bring God’s own Son, Jesus, into our world. Because this joy; this gift of God’s Son through Mary that we treasure and ponder, has been given to us, God calls us now to hand on this gift of shalom enveloped in our human flesh to the world around us. And how might we treasure and ponder while handing on this gift we have received?

Again, may we look to Mary as an example of treasuring and pondering while handing on. From the moment Mary conceived Jesus in her womb, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Mary’s own assumption into heaven, body and soul, Mary allowed the peace, the shalom of God to settle into her very depths. Shalom became the foundation of who Mary was, treasuring and pondering, such that then this shalom was able to flow from her. God calls us now to the same willingness to treasure and ponder, to allow shalom to take on our human flesh and become the essence of who we are, not only the historical event of the birth of a child in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Every time our prayerful celebration here, our treasuring and pondering before the altar of the Lord, allows and strengthens us to act in even small ways of kindness, mercy, and justice toward one another, shalom incarnate becomes a little more who we are and flows from us as it did from Mary into the world.

Let me go back (briefly but to some time ago) in history, to the Council of Ephesus of 431. There, at Ephesus, our Church’s bishops first encouraged all Christians to pray through Mary under the title of Theotokos, “God-bearer” or, as we Roman Catholics usually refer to Mary, “Mother of God.” Outside the place where the bishops of Ephesus assembled, the faithful chanted, as if as a prayer for the unity of the bishops and the Church, which was anything but assured in 431, “Mother of God”…

Here, now, on this first day of 2020, may we join in this prayer of Ephesus: “Mother of God,” Mother and Queen of Peace, through your Son Jesus Christ, give us, our Church and our world the gift of shalom. May we treasure and ponder, allow to become incarnate in our depths, and then hand on this gift as you did. Shalom chaverim, as our Hebrew-speaking sisters and brothers might pray: “Let us go forth in peace” into this New Year to bear to the world, enveloped in our human flesh, the peace we have received, pondered, treasured, and that we celebrate today.

Homily for Monday, 1 January 2018– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Octave Day of Christmas

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

This homily was given at Our Lady of the Valley and St. James Church, Coldstream and Vernon, BC, Canada.

How many names and devotional titles can we think of by which we, as Catholics, celebrate Mary? We often give her, as in the name of today’s celebration, two names, “blessed” and “virgin.” When we speak of Mary as “the Blessed Virgin,” we combine two different Gospel accounts of Mary around the conception, birth, and infancy of Jesus: Matthew, who applies Isaiah’s prophecy to Mary, “A virgin shall be with child,” and Luke, in whose Gospel Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, first calls Mary “blessed.”

The second part of the title of today’s celebration of Mary, “Mother of God,” is a simplified form of a complicated Greek title given Mary at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, theotokos or “God-bearer.” The main purpose of the bishops at Ephesus was to affirm the truth of the two natures of Christ, both divine and human. Mary, then, was said not to have borne Jesus in his human nature but also in his divine nature in her womb; Mary is not only “Christ-bearer” but “God-bearer.”

And we have a long list of less-complicated names for Mary than theotokos. Anybody here whose name is Mary or a variation of Mary: I do not want to be too gloomy, but your name derives from myrrh, the burial spice brought by the magi in Matthew’s Gospel alongside gold and incense. The name Mary— Mariam, “myrrh-bearer”— reminds us of the suffering Mary would endure alongside her Son Jesus through his passion and death. No saint has as many titles or is called upon for as many causes as Mary. Right here [in the Vernon area], Mary is the namesake of our church, Our Lady of the Valley. When I was a teenager, my family moved to a parish called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, outside of Edmonton, Alberta. Pope Francis has helped to popularize the devotion to Our Lady, Untier of Knots, which was not a very common devotion until Francis became pope. Whole countries and regions, like the United States under Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception or the American continents under Our Lady of Guadalupe, are dedicated or, we say, consecrated to Mary.

Mary is called upon in times of illness. She has been called upon to defend nations in times of conflict. She is the patron of many a religious order, of refugees and migrants, of the homeless, the dying, of widows, and of those in situations of unplanned or crisis pregnancies. From the “Black Madonnas” of Częstochowa in Poland and Montserrat in Spain to her appearance to humble shepherd children of Fátima in Portugal; from Lourdes in France to atop a pillar in Spain; from Kazan in Russia to Australia’s Mary, Help of Christians, to Notre-Dame-du-Cap in Trois Rivières, Quebec, here in Canada, and beyond, the number of devotions to Mary and the causes associated with her are countless.

We also often call Mary “Queen of Heaven.” Two glorious mysteries of the Rosary, Mary’s Assumption and heavenly Crowning, recall our belief that Mary has been taken up body and soul into heaven, and reigns there as the greatest of all the saints. When we end our Rosary, and at other times, we pray, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope”… and, during the Easter season, we might pray the “Regina coeli”: “Queen of heaven, rejoice, for the Son you merited to bear has risen as he said, alleluia”!

But what does it mean for us to recognize Mary as “queen”? I have to admit some personal fascination with royalty. Lately, as I have been staying with family over this Christmas season, I have caught a few episodes of the Netflix series “The Crown.” This series is about the rise to the throne and reign of Queen Elizabeth II. In several scenes of “The Crown,” Queen Elizabeth is sought for her government and diplomatic skill. She is consulted by Prime Ministers in dealing with sometimes tense events in the world early in her reign. “The Crown” portrays Elizabeth as a competent, strong yet calm queen. And yet I am even more drawn to how frequently “The Crown” portrays Elizabeth as a devoted and even tender wife to Prince Philip and mother to their children.

To a much greater extent than of Queen Elizabeth, indeed perfectly so, the same is true of Mary. She is Queen of Heaven, and yet also Mother. Mary is Mother of God; she is Mother of Christ; she is our Mother. Mary’s queenship and motherhood are inseparable. When we pray, “Hail, Holy Queen,” we add immediately, “Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.” Our Regina coeli acknowledges Mary as “Queen of Heaven” (these are the prayer’s first words), and then immediately as the joyous one who bore her, and God’s, now-risen Son. Our Advent and Christmas hymn, Alma Redemptoris Mater, again acknowledges the inseparable queenship and motherhood of Mary: “Loving mother of the Redeemer, gate of heaven, star of the sea, assist your people who have fallen yet strive to rise again. To the wonderment of nature you bore your Creator, yet remained a virgin after as before. You who received Gabriel's joyful greeting, have pity on us poor sinners.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux was known for her reverence and yet familial relationship with Mary. St. Thérèse knew Mary intimately as both queen and mother; as queen because Mary is our Mother. Some of the last words St. Thérèse spoke were these: “We know well that the Blessed Virgin is Queen of heaven and earth. But, I believe, she is more Mother than Queen, [because she] greatly increases the splendor of” her children.

As our Mother, the Mother of the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary does not keep the splendor of queenship to herself. Instead, she guides us tenderly toward and reflects upon us the same splendor of heaven. Through Mary, Mother and Queen, God blesses us in the same way he once asked Moses to bless his people: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Through Mary, our Queen because she is our Mother; Mother of Christ, Mother of God, St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, we are made sons and daughters of the same God. “And if son [and daughter], then” we are also heirs (do we hear the royal language here?) to the salvation to which Mary is leading us.

Luke’s Gospel, we hear today, says that, when the shepherds arrived at the manger in Bethlehem where the newborn Jesus lay and “made known what had been told them about this child,” Mary “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Treasuring and pondering: These are the actions of a devoted, loving mother. As Mary once treasured and pondered the shepherds’ words about her Son Jesus, we can be assured, sisters and brothers, that Mary still ponders and still treasures us in her heart, the heart of a mother.

And so today we celebrate many things, including the beginning of a new year, no less. But, as we ring in this New Year, we celebrate first and foremost our Church’s Mother’s Day. We celebrate Mary, the one who ponders and treasures; the one who blesses and leads us toward heaven, toward God and God’s Son, Mary’s Son, Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate this joyful feast of Mary, greatest among the saints; woman of countless names, titles, and devotions; woman of our age and for all ages; Queen because she is first Mother. She, the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth, is Mother of Christ; Mother of God; Mother and model of the Church; our Mother, for the salvation and greater splendor of her children.