It's interesting that we celebrate the Feast of the Mother of God on New Year's Day.
Interesting, but probably calculated that way by the Church
to seal the beginning of the year with the presence of Our Lady,
a focus on Our Lady, that she guide us through the next year,
that she help us with our resolutions for the next year,
that she help us to change and be transformed
into a new and better Christian this new year.
These kind of changes, these kind of flipping the year
are really helpful to us to really change our life,
to really have something to start anew with,
to have something, a reason to start anew and to do better
and to change, to transform ourselves.
And that's a practical thing, but it's also a...
um...
intended by the Church and intended by God
to really help us by means of grace,
not just a human effort, a human construction,
but a divine intention,
the will of God that we really do make a change in our life.
And He provides the grace for it, and we have to cooperate.
We have to work with God.
We need to go with Him.
We need to go with the flow of grace that God gives us.
So we need to present our petitions to Our Lady,
our resolutions to Our Lady now, this new year,
to change our life and to know and to have that hope and confidence
that we are going to be able to do it.
How many times do we set resolutions that we don't follow through on
or that we forget about or that we just found ourselves too weak
to follow?
How many times do we set resolutions that we don't follow through with
but we need to know that God's grace is there
and that we can truly be better Christians,
more holy, more saintly,
more on the path to holiness and virtue,
and greater union with God,
greater love for God,
greater realization of what we are made for,
that we are made to serve God and be united to Him throughout our day,
throughout our life,
and become more and more like Him,
more and more transformed by Him.
And this is all a working of Our Lady in our hearts.
This is the role of Our Lady to work, to transform, to change,
to manipulate our heart into making it more like Christ.
This is her role, her vocation,
and the power that God has given to her to do in our life.
And we need to realize that and work in cooperation with Our Lady
for our transformation,
for our transformation.
That's what we need to do.
That's what we should do.
That's what we are blessed to be able to do in our Catholic faith,
in our understanding of the role of Our Lady.
And of course, today we focus on her privilege,
her exalted dignity as Mother of God,
the greatest privilege of Our Lady as being Mother of God,
the reason for her being,
the reason for her Immaculate Conception
and all the other privileges of Our Lady,
because she was ordained and decreed by God from all eternity
to be the Mother of the eternal Son of God.
No greater dignity.
So we're talking about greatness side by side,
the most sublime, profound, deep humility.
Greatness and humility side by side.
Our Lady was told she would become the Mother of God,
and she humbled herself.
That's what she did.
She didn't exalt herself.
God exalted her.
She humbled herself.
And that's what we have to do.
This is a model, an example to all of us
that in our exaltations in this life,
we will all be exalted at times,
praised, lifted up, maybe in charge of things,
and we need to humble ourselves as much as we can.
Accepting humiliations.
I am exalted.
I'm in charge of something.
I am talented in something.
I have some intellect, some gift from God for my squandering,
for my indulgence, no, for the service of others,
to give to our neighbor.
We are given wealth, talent, ability to help our neighbor.
That's the role of Our Lady.
She didn't squander the gift that God gave her.
It was given to her, and she knew it,
for the good of all of humanity.
She is to be the mother of God.
She is to be the mother of all creatures.
And she knew what it meant.
It meant great suffering.
She had to bear the sins of the world with Jesus.
It wasn't for her.
She saw she was given this role to shepherdess all these sheep,
all of us.
To be a mother to all of her children.
That was her role.
She saw that God poured all of his power,
graces and virtues into Our Lady for our benefit and for hers,
but primarily for ours.
She was to gather all of us beneath her arms,
beneath her mantle, to take care of us,
to help us and guide us to salvation,
to happiness and holiness.
To serve God.
This is her place.
So we have this exaltation.
God exalted Our Lady as high as possible,
as even God could do.
She couldn't be any more perfect.
She couldn't be any more great.
She couldn't be any more holy or more perfect than God made her.
The perfect creature, the highest possible dignity and greatness
in a creature.
She's given to Our Lady.
She is that pinnacle.
She is that star in the sky for us to look upon,
to admire, to thank God for,
to know that she's one of us too.
One of us.
And she, as she is raised up and exalted,
she is still connected to all of us.
She's still related to all of us.
She's intimately involved and concerned with all of us.
God has done that.
God has done that to her, to one of our race,
for our benefit.
So there's exaltation there.
And then there's this profound, deep, immense humility.
Our Lady humbles herself the same exact time.
Never did she do what Satan did in puffing herself up
and puffing himself up and becoming proud
and thinking that he could even be equal to God.
No, Our Lady did the exact opposite.
Never did a shadow or a hint of pride enter into her heart.
But she immediately humbled herself
and kept the focus on her nothingness.
She always held on to her,
the awareness of her nothingness in her mind.
And then she humbled herself.
She accepted the humiliations that God would present to her.
She prayed for lowliness.
She prayed to be obscure, hidden,
as we see in the Gospel.
She's hidden in a large way.
She's hidden.
The greatness we see in Our Lady in the Scripture
is pretty much from meditation
and into the meaning of Scripture.
But we have to meditate on that.
Our Lady is not shouting out her greatness.
She says, you know,
God has exalted me in my lowliness.
So this is what we need to,
can really learn from,
that as we are exalted,
as we are given gifts and abilities,
that we need to humble ourselves
by practical ways, you know,
accepting humiliations and sufferings,
accepting low places,
serving others.
How I take this gift,
do I just sit back and let people wait on me,
praise me, give me things?
No.
I need to actively serve.
This is our response to gifts that God gives to us.
I go and serve.
I go and help people.
I go and humble myself in taking the menial tasks.
I go and do these things.
If I'm an employer or I'm a boss or a superior,
I do the lowly duties.
I do those things as well as meditating on my nothingness
and praying for humility,
praying for even, you know,
even God to humble me.
And he will.
And he has many, many ways of doing that.
We all know and experience.
So as humility and greatness of Our Lady,
this is what we can never forget.
The greatness of Our Lady
and the power that God has bestowed on her
for our help, for our benefit,
and her sublime humility
to teach us that we have to always stay humble
in the eyes of God and his service
and completely depending on God,
completely depending upon God
because he can annihilate us at a moment.
He can humble us and humiliate us
and crush us if we deserve it,
if we give ourselves into pride.
He can do it in a snap of a finger,
blink of an eye,
and he will,
unless we choose to be proud
and serve ourselves.
And he can punish us by letting us
live in the misery of our pride,
or
we can ask for that humility
and serve God in humility
and then he will keep us safe in humility,
which is really peace, security for our salvation
and goodness for ourselves
and goodness that we can show to our neighbor.
So let us thank God for this great feast today,
the first beginning of this year,
to see it as a beginning for our own spiritual life,
to make resolutions,
now, today,
and knowing that God will give us the grace
to follow through,
to fulfill them,
to really be different,
more holy,
more on the path to holiness,
to pick ourselves up if we have fallen
or if we do,
and to keep on that path
to the mountain of God,
to the mountain of holiness,
to the mountain of Our Lady,
Our Lord.
Keep walking up higher and higher
with God's grace and strength
in Our Lady's accompanying hand,
accompanying presence and guidance
throughout our next year.
Amen.