do I need 2021 to be easier?

Homily

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

1 January 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Do I need 2021 to be easier?  Absolutely not!

I might get booed for saying that.  Yet I really believe it.  2020 was indeed a monster!.  I was not prepared.  Yet shame on me if I didn't learn anything or grow last year.  There were so many lessons to be had.  Are not the greatest stories, those with real consequences, forged in conflict, not in comfort?  Like it or not, 2020 is what we are made for.  We are made for greatness, heroic virtue, and for swallowing up evil with courage and love.  We can do hard things!

Let's do more than just wish 2020 to be over.  I k now everyone wants relief from the hardships and heartache.  Yet what if 2021 is even harder?  Will we complain and lose heart, or rise to the challenge of the times?

Fear, hate and blame are not strategies for dealing with the evil that will surely come, oftentimes sooner rather than later.  It's great when distancing, escaping and avoiding work.  Yet can we persevere when they don't?

We celebrate with Mary today the 8th day of Christmas.  8 is a huge number for us!  The 8th day is the day that we are in.  It's the process of the redemption of the world from the inside out, from least to great.  It's the time to defeat evil, darkness, suffering and death, those previously undefeated enemies, through the mysteries of our salvation.  It's a day that you're invited to play your part in, just as Mary fulfills her role.

God is all in on this 8th day plan!  He allows a member of our race, a small innocent girl, to be the Mother of all that God is.  That's right!  If that doesn't blow your mind I'm not sure what would.  God is an inseparable communion of persons, so when God is joined to a human nature in the womb of Mary, She mothers not a piece of God, but all of Him!  This is to say that God is all in!  Mary is all in!  Are you?

To play your part in this unbelievable plan to redeem the world, you have to be all in.  There's no predicting, controlling or hiding!  There is not need either for things to get easier. Circumstantial change is just that, a change of circumstances.  Real, substantial change, the kind that confronts evil rather than avoid it, doesn't need things to get easier for them to get better.

Mary's faith is a strategy for our times.  She played her part at the birth and the death of Jesus.  Her heart remains open, not closed, so that our hearts might be laid bare.  There is no need to fear or blame or hate our way through another year.  Instead, our strategy is one of coming together, a response of faith, love and responsibility!

Do I need 2021 to be easier for it to be better?  Since you are not in control of that, I hope not!  Let's pray instead that our ultimate strategy for 2021 is our faith.  Let's be more prepared for anything!