I have always wondered about the connection between Mary and the New Year. And now, it becomes clear to me that we are not only to absorb events as they happen, but to try to understand their meaning and God’s message in them, too. “As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Mary’s heart is THE place of discovering Jesus – who He truly is. Her entire life, and the Church’s entire life, is centered on that process of pondering who that Child now born to us really is, and it is this aspect of Mary’s motherhood that is most important for our New Year, a year in which we continue our own journey of the heart towards God.

Amidst the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, God offers us this New Year as a moment of grace: a chance to start again, an opportunity to renew, restore and rebuild. God does this through His Son who is the Savior of the world. In the Gospels, again meet the Child born in that lowly manger, and now given a name, the human name of God, Jesus!

In becoming human, God assumed a human identity. Like everyone else, we can now call on Him by His name. We can now truly know Him! Jesus, whose name means Savior, is an accessible God who helps free us from the clutches of sins and bondage of sinfulness.

As the New Year unfolds, let us bring to Jesus our troubles, our challenges, the things that weigh us down, and lay them down before His manger, and leave them there. Offer them to Him. He is waiting to receive our sins, our pains, our difficulties. He is waiting to touch our lives so that with His birth, there will be a renewal in the way we live. If there is anything the Christ Child desires to receive, it is our desire to offer to Him our human sufferings, those that keep us away from Him.

In all these, let us never forget that Mary is our gentle companion – let us consecrate the New Year to her. She pondered and treasured things in her heart. In her reflection, she gazed at the face of Jesus, her Child. Her peace, composure and steady response were the product of a living, loving relationship with the Son of God to whom she dedicated her life. Once we do this, our faith can carry us through all the surprises of this New year filled with grace upon grace.

Sono semipro grate,
Father Erick

(For New Year, 2022)