What's my resolution?

Homily

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

1 January 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's my resolution?

It's actually a bad question, because life in the new year is not all about me.  But I'll stick with it anyway.

I have a couple friends who like to toss around ideas for a 'word of the year.'  It's not a terrible exercise.  It can be a reflective and prayerful and fruitful one, to receive from God a word that He wishes you to live into during the new calendar year.

Yet I wonder if Mary ever conjured up a word of the year for herself.  I doubt it. She was too attuned to what God is doing to seek a word just for herself.  In today's Gospel, the mother of God is collecting information from the shepherds, noticing how the ancient promises of God are being brought to fulfillment.  

I can spend way too much time thinking about myself, wondering how to make this my best year ever, and to emerge from 2024 as the best version of myself.  But this isn't prayer the way Mary did it. It's just thinking about myself.  Mary never made herself the star of the show. She simply reflected with great sensitivity. Her desire was only to notice what God is about.

On this 8th day of Christmas, when Jesus receives His Holy Name, may my resolution for 2024 simply be to echo the great Magnificat of Mary.  The Almighty has done great things FOR me, and holy is HIS name.