The story is told that the little Alice was captivated with the stories of Jesus, especially the eventual death of Jesus on the cross. And she was overjoyed when she was chosen to be an angel in the school nativity play. She learned her lines to perfection. However, little Alice was known to add her own logic to every situation. So the nativity play was well under way and when it was Alice’s turn to say her lines to Mary, she said: “Don’ t worry, Mary, you will have a lovely baby and you will call him Jesus.” Then she added, “But I wouldn’t get too attached to him ‘cos he’ll be gone by Easter.”
Isn’t it amazing how certain voices keep us grounded in truth and cause us to ponder, reflect, review, or even reframe our lived realities? Certainly this feast of the Solemnity of Mary, calls us, like Mary, to ponder all the “joyful and sorrowful mysteries” of our own lives. And yet, not to get too attached to them because they are only stepping stones that gently move us forward with courage, hope, imagination, new insight, and wisdom into this new year of 2013!
In our Gospel, we see that Mary and Joseph are transients, equivalent to the homeless of our city streets. In this setting, Mary, a young woman in a patriarchal society brought her child into the world without the security of a home. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, the traditional Palestinian way of protecting a newborn, and laid him in a manger.
Mary was very much like the majority of women in the world today; she was a peasant from a small village; she was poor, exploited by the rich; she had to pay taxes to Caesar, to Herod, and to the temple. She was like many people in our world today, especially women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America - in all those tiny villages where women work 10 or more hours a day on domestic chores – fetching water, gathering wood, and preparing meals.
In our Gospel, Luke is telling us that Mary was someone who throughout her entire life pondered, reflected, and listened deeply to God. In her pondering, she let go of control, and trusted deeply, and was open to all possibilities. She allowed God’s love to direct her life rather than letting her fears catapult her into illusion and darkness.
Today is also World Day of Peace – a day to ponder the new Bethlehems and new Nazareths that are happening in us where the Divine can find a home within us and within our world once again.
So let us pray:
• That like Mary, we may risk moving to the margins, and let God direct and guide us as we walk this New Year’s path perhaps finding ourselves needing to go gently, and learning to hum in the darkness for comfort and courage.
• That God will truly look us full in the face, smile upon our efforts at peace and justice for all, and shine upon our world and bless us .
• That like Mary, may God grace us in our attempts to hold, keep, treasure, and toss together our ponderings, act on them and give birth to deep peace in our hearts, our homes, our church, our government, and in our world.
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