Majestic fireworks light up the night sky; a huge and brilliant crystal ball drops in Times Square; horns sound and strangers embrace one another- all this in welcoming another New Year and the promise it brings.
The Church adds its own touch in welcoming the New Year by honoring Mary as Mother of God. Eight days earlier, at Christmas, we welcomed the birth of her Son, the Prince of Peace. Today, the first day of a new year, we honor the Mother of that Son. He is no ordinary child and she is no ordinary mother. Jesus is God’s Son and Mary is the Mother of God.
Thus, the Church welcomes every New Year by honoring a mother. Everything a mother is and everything a mother stands for is what, in Mary, the Church wishes to bless us with during all the years of our life.
By definition, a mother brings forth new life with all its promise and possibility. The new life that Mary brings forth is Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us-and-God-for-us. It’s almost as if a smiling and proud mother holds out to us her own dear son, inviting each of us to take her son into our arms and into our lives and, from this day forward, to live as he lived, to love as he loved, and to serve as he served.
Every mother hopes that her child will be a blessing to the world, bettering it by the manner of life lived. In giving us Jesus, Mary gives us a model to admire and a life to imitate.
I am especially fond of Mary under the title of “Our Lady of Good Counsel.” Her counsel at the wedding of Cana, “Do whatever he tells you,” is the core of both Gospel and Salesian spirituality. Throughout her entire life, Mary did whatever God asked of her and accepted whatever God permitted: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” On the human level, she and Joseph taught their son to be just as responsive to the divine will as they always were: “I do always the will of the One who sent me.” As our mother, she counsels that very same openness, that very same generous responsiveness, to the divine will.
St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal made such ready responsiveness to whatever God asks or sends the core of their spiritual legacy to us and to our world and, this, in both happy and challenging matters, large and small.
Most of us begin every new year with resolutions. Let’s resolve to honor Mary, the Mother of God and our mother, and to live Jesus, her Son, by imitating in the nooks and crannies of our own lives their ready responsiveness to God’s will for us. Let our resolution be: “May your will be done on earth –in the very earth of my own life--as it is in heaven!”
Now, that’s one resolution we ought to keep!
Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Wilmington-Philadelphia Province
