Reflecting in our Hearts: Mary and the New Year

The Church celebrates two things today, the more important is the Solemnity of Mary as Mother of God, the second, and less important, is the secular New Year.

Two weeks ago I preached about Mary as Theotokos, the God-bearer.  We looked at why she is rightly called the Mother of God as there is a strong Scriptural basis for it as well as very strong historical development of this dogmatic Truth as defined at the Council of Ephesus.  But, more importantly as I mentioned two weeks ago, as good as it is to understand and know the theology of Mary as Mother of God, the more valuable is to live like her.

At our fourth Sunday of Advent we could see Mary’s desire to share the Good News with her cousin Elizabeth.  This week I want to share about her, “Keeping all these things and reflecting on them in her heart.”  We find this passage “of Mary pondering these things in her heart” in a number of places.  In Mary’s meeting with Simeon when he prophesies about Jesus being the cause for the rise and fall of many in Israel and a light to the Gentiles he also warns Mary that a sword would pierce her own her heart.  She then reflects on what Simeon said and kept it in her heart.  She also ponders in her heart when they lost Jesus in Jerusalem and then found Him in the Temple and again today when the shepherds give praise, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”

How often do we like our Mother, the Mother of God, reflect and keep in our hearts the things of God?  How much time do we give to prayer?  Since this is a New Year may be it is time to become more like our Mother Mary and pray not just more, but deeper and more reflectively.

As Catholics we love our rosaries, and rightly so, we love our Novenas, we have many and all good, we have intercessory prayer, always great to pray for someone else, we have set prayers, like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, etc., prayers that are Scriptural and filled with Tradition.  All of these prayers have their rightful place and should be practiced.  But we also have in the Church meditative prayer, reflective prayer, and contemplative prayer, all related with their center being on quiet discernment on Jesus or some other Christian mystery, i.e. God, the Holy Spirit, some Scripture verse, etc.

The quiet is uncomfortable, we are not used to praying that way and through history we have come to associate that type of prayer with monks and nuns.  We all need to reclaim that type of prayer in which like Mary we ponder these things in our hearts.

Conversation and friendship is a two way street, I talk, you talk, we both talk to one another.  When I do all the talking my friend will get bored, frustrated, and eventually want out of the conversation, because he can’t get a word in edgewise.  How can we hear Jesus when all we do is talk-talk or if we never quiet ourselves?

If we want to know God one way is to study theology, but through theology we will only know “about God,” we still won’t really know Him until we enter into conversation with Him.  Mary was chosen by God because she knew Him best, no one I believe reflected on God more and with tremendous quiet than the Blessed Mother.  And just maybe for this New Year she is asking us to do the same.  Be still in the presence of the Lord; find Him in the quiet, in the solace, in your hearts, where like Mary we will always keep Him.  AMEN.