January 1, 2017
World Day of Peace / Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
(Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21)
31 December 2016 / 01 January 2017 – St. Austin Parish, Austin, TX
We just had a holy day for Mary less than four weeks ago. Why do we have another one now? What’s the big deal about Mary being the Mother of God?
Well, it’s a huge deal that Mary is the Mother of God. In fact, my absolute favorite story in church history is about the Council of Ephesus in 431, where people rioted in the streets over whether in fact Mary was merely the Mother of Christ or if she was the Mother of God. (If you want to know more, I highly recommend reading the wonderful fifth chapter of Kenneth Holum’s book, Theodosian Empresses.)
But today, as has been the case every year since Pope Paul VI declared it in 1968, is also the World Day of Peace. What a beautiful way to begin the new year! We’ll use the readings and prayers from the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, but we’ll look to Mary as a role model for how each of us can help foster peace in the world.
My dearest friend in the Paulist Fathers is Tom Gibbons, who was ordained with René Constanza and me in 2012. Some of you know him from when he served at St. Austin’s as a seminarian in 2009-2010. He’s outgoing, hilarious, and media-savvy, three qualities which come into play in the story I’m about to tell you.
At. St. Paul’s College, the seminarians and novices would take turns serving at Mass. One of Tom’s first times serving at Mass was particularly memorable. On that fateful day, after leading us in prayers for the Church, for political leaders, and for the needs of the most vulnerable among us, Tom asked us to pray for bees.
That’s right. I said bees.
You may recall that scientists first sounded an alarm in late 2006 because the European honey bee colonies in North America were mysteriously collapsing. These bees are responsible for the pollination of roughly one third of the agricultural crops in the United States, including almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and strawberries.
Despite Tom’s best intentions about our intentions, we couldn’t help but laugh at how Tom had phrased the prayer. It seemed silly to pray for insects.
Tom, being Tom, of course, sought to justify himself by writing a blog entry about it. Now, the first time I told this story in public, Tom said I wasn’t fair in explaining his side of the story. He didn’t think that it was fair that I quoted him word for word.
I love Tom like a brother, so let me try to do right by him this time. On his blog, Tom pointed out that there’s something very noble and practical in articulating a specific prayer to God that isn’t just the “same old, same old.” It shows thought and attention, trying to understand the root causes on how God makes the marvelous complexities of our world work. Tom questioned if some people who pray for world peace, on the other hand, might not really be putting much thought into their prayer. In his blog post, he suggested that our prayers for peace sound more authentic to other listeners when we mention specific places and circumstances in which we hope peace will prevail.
The Church has designated January 1 as both the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God and the World Day for Peace. It’s a great opportunity for us to ask: what does God expect us to do to bring peace to our world? Mary is also called the Queen of Peace, but as far as we know, she wasn’t marching on Herod’s palace demanding equal rights for the underprivileged. But I think Tom also has a point, that simply praying for world peace falls short of the goal, too.
If only God can bring peace to the world, what is our role in achieving it? Three elements in today’s gospel may shed some light.
First: the first people to receive the angels’ message of “peace to people of good will” were shepherds. Remarkable! Shepherds were considered the lowest of the low in Judean society, untrustworthy and of dubious moral character. The only people who would choose to guard sheep, the thinking went, were people who could not find an honest job.
Second we have the scene at the stable. While we believe that Mary and Joseph were of humble circumstances, they probably had few interactions with social pariahs such as shepherds. And they certainly had never encountered anyone like the wealthy Persian astrologers we’ll hear about next week.
Thirdly, there’s that curious verse: “Mary… kept all these things in her heart.” Mary was surely a woman of prayer, but here Luke is urging us all to engage in a special form of prayer called contemplation. Contemplation is looking for how God is present in our daily experiences.
With these three things in mind, let’s join Mary in contemplating the scene. Instead of being surrounded by family and friends in these first days after having a child, Mary and Joseph were surrounded by farm animals, social outcasts, and wealthy foreigners. God was present in the child born, of course, but God was also present in the diversity of people gathered by the Holy Spirit.
This diversity is both inspiring and challenging for us today. It’s inspiring because the world is becoming rapidly more interconnected. Our neighborhoods and parishes becoming more culturally diverse. We can learn about the remotest corners of the earth through a quick internet search. More than ever, we can experience the rich diversity within the Body of Christ.
However, technology and prosperity has led many of us to experience greater isolation. Cable news, Skype, and Facebook allow us to surround ourselves solely with people who agree with us. We are rapidly losing the ability to dialogue with people who disagree with us! The Church has begun to fracture along “liberal” and “conservative” lines, too. We drive to the parish that best suits us.
This isolationism is no way to achieve peace. If we would contemplate how God invites us to reproduce the diversity in the manger scene, we’d surely find new ways to bring peace to our world. Pope Francis seems to be leading the way in us taking such an approach more seriously!
Back to the bees. Since the colony collapse received wide-spread attention in 2006, a lot of effort has been made to understand the phenomenon. It’s turned out to be a beguilingly complex problem. Researchers on several continents have pooled their studies on possible contributions of certain pesticides, pathogens, immunodeficiencies, antibiotics, migratory patterns, hive rental practices, malnutrition, loss of genetic diversity, parasites, electromagnetic radiation, genetically modified crops. While the scientists still can’t completely explain what’s happening, professional bee-keepers have been able to adopt several practices to help prevent the further spread of the collapse. In other words, a diversity of people have used their gifts to tackle a difficult problem.
Tom, of course, credits the progress to his prayers for the bees.
None of us can presume to know the mind of God, but one thing is for sure: if it takes both our prayers and our God-given talents to protect the bee colonies, peace will only prevail on the earth when we both expend our God-given talents to peacemaking AND rely on God.