“I just love New Years”, the teller said to me at the bank
the other day, “a chance for everything from the last year to get wiped away,
and we start completely fresh.”
“I doubt that explanation will help with bill collectors”, I
reminded her.
Don’t think that I am cynical about the start of a New Year because
I certainly am anything but that! I think that New Years is the perfect (and
obvious) time to evaluate where we've been, where we’re going, and how we are
going to get there. That doesn't mean however that just because of where we
fall in the calendar, the mistakes of the past disappears- if that were the
case we would lose our victories too, and I certainly wouldn't want that to
happen!
The New Year provides a time to evaluate, and to begin those
steps towards achieving the goals we set for ourselves. The year that has
passed (and for that matter all the ones that passed before it), all contribute
to who we are today. So a midst all the wishes for “health, happiness, and
blessings” in the New Year, how does it all become a reality? How do we ensure
that all the New Years wishes don’t amount to mere holiday fluff? How do we
take the years that have passed, and somehow bring along the good, and
transform those things that we want to change? John the Evangelist tells us in the prologue to his Gospel (an excerpt of which we heard on Christmas Morning at Mass); "From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace, because while the law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (Jn 1:16-17).
Grace is the answer.
January 1st is, in the Church across the world, the
Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God. This title of Mary is one of the earliest
Marian dogmas. At the Council of Ephesus, the term “Theotokos” was adopted to
describe Mary, a Greek word meaning, “the God-bearer”.
When the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the Annunciation,
she greeted Mary as being “full of grace”. It was then through Mary’s “yes”,
that God was able to become one like us, and the Incarnation is the means
through which we have been saved. Her motherhood is a moment of grace therefore
for all of us! We all share the dignity of being sons and daughters of God
through this sacred mystery, and as dwelling places of the Holy Spirit we too
are “God bearers” in our world today. We
are all, on the day of our Baptism, "full of grace".
Grace is the answer.
Grace is what we need!
According to the Catechism; “Grace is favor, the free and
undeserved help that God gives us to respond to His call to become children of
God, adoptive sons [and daughters] partakers of the divine nature, and heirs to
the kingdom.” The Catechism goes on to explain that “the Grace of Christ is the
gift of His own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our souls.” That grace
transforms our lives, and as members of the Baptized, the Sacramental life of
the Church allows us to grow in that grace as we move along in our lives. They
are there at the various stations of life where we pause and “recharge” to take
the next step along the journey.
In a way New Years is one of those stations of life! We stop
and examine things. It is this gift that will take our past and transform it into fuel for our future. It is
the gift of Grace that will make our present, into a life lived not solely for
ourselves, but rather for Him who has given it to us in the first place! May
Mary, our mother, be ever with us over the course of this New Year. May her
life be for us a lesson on “living with grace”: and may that grace be alive and
pure in our lives to make 2013 all that it possibly can be!
May you all enjoy a New Year that is full of grace!
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