To the Band of Brothers: January 1, 2022

2022! We made it. We may have crawled here, but we made it. If you would have told me this time last year that we would be spending the whole of 2021 under the pandemic I would have laughed heartily. Impossible, I would have thought, considering our modern technology and the rapidity of scientific evolution. That little viral strand would not keep us under its microscopic thumb for the whole of 2021… no way. Well, way. 

Now, here we are venturing into a new year and still riding the COVID wave under the newest, albeit less severe, guise of the omicron variant. Here we are still living under CDC guidelines and reading up on the latest information Dr. Anthony Fauci gives us about a virus that continues to baffle most immunologists and the scientific community. 

On this first day of the year, the Church celebrates the feast of Mary, the Mother of God. The official title is from the Greek “Theotokos”: “theo” which means “God” and “tokos” which means “God-bearer” or “the one who gives birth to…”  Leave it to the Greeks to pack into one word a theology as profound and earth-shattering as any in the 2,000 year history of the Church. Ask any of our Christian brethren of the non-Catholic variety and you will know what I mean by earth-shattering. 

The gospel reading for today’s Mass is taken appropriately from Luke (2:16-21). I say appropriately because it is specifically the Marian gospel, dedicating more attention to the Blessed Mother than any of the others. Not being one of the original band members of the apostles, Luke never actually met Jesus, but came onto the scene shortly afterward. So, you may ask, how does he write with so much detail about the annunciation of the birth of Christ and his infancy? The answer is clearly Mary.

For hours the two must have sat there in John’s house talking about those childhood years. Luke wanted to make sure all those individuals who were going to read about Christ got the significant details about the early years. It’s a bit like going on to Wikipedia and reading the biography of anyone. The reader knows Frank Sinatra was a famous crooner who sang “New York, New York” or that Dan Marino was the greatest pocket passer the game of football has ever known. But, it’s not until you get to the first section of their Wikipedia page titled “Early Life” that you read Sinatra was “born on December 12, 1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey” and that Marino “was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is of Italian and Polish ancestry.”

Luke introduces you to the life of someone you know the ending about and gives you his beginning so that a more intimate portrait of the man becomes alive. He introduces you to the main characters, more specifically Mary and Joseph, so you can appreciate their influence on his life. By the end of the gospel, you are convinced that if Jesus is the incarnation of God, then logically, Mary his mother is the mother of God, Theotokos.

In today’s gospel passage, Luke writes about the message the shepherds received from the angel about the glorious birth of the child. He refers to everyone’s amazement and how they glorified and praised God because of what they had heard and seen. Mary’s reaction to all of this is to ponder it silently in her heart.

Those are two great terms, ponder and silence. They are lost arts in our modern world. To ponder, what does that mean exactly? It comes from the Latin “pondus” which literally means “weight”. When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was a western called “Bonanza”. It told the story of cowboy Ben Cartwright and his sons who ran a massive Nevada ranch called the Ponderosa. I never thought much of the name of the ranch, but now realize it was called Ponderosa to emphasize the massiveness of the place. According to Luke, Mary pondered. She didn’t simply think about these things rationally, but pondered the weightiness of the whole matter. Pondering gives you the impression it requires much more than just your brain, it also requires your heart and soul. It’s also not done communally but as a solitary exercise. 

That kind of experience cannot be done with much talking. It has to be done quietly, in silence, to allow the whole of your existence to take it all in and work out quietly the consequence and significance. Silence is a powerful thing because it is only in silence that we can truly listen and only by listening that we can truly become wise. The famous Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “If I were allowed to prescribe one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God is proclaimed, we do not hear it; there is too much noise. Therefore, first create silence.”

So, as we make our way into 2022, let us take a page out of Luke’s gospel and the life of the Blessed Mother. Take the time this year to ponder often in silence. Silently ponder the year that has passed in order to better appreciate who you are and what you have done. Silently ponder the future in order to better appreciate what you can become and what you have yet to do. 

Auspice Maria