Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and for the Epiphany
January 1, 2022
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversations God wants to have with each of us this weekend as we celebrate both the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on January 1st and the Lord’s Epiphany on January 2nd. The two feasts are intimately connected to the celebration of Christmas and therefore to each other. They feature, respectively, the visit of the Shepherds to Bethlehem and subsequently the Magi. And so I would like to focus on the dialogue God wants to provoke and deepen in us through the gift of both feasts.
- We begin with what we will hear on Friday night and Saturday at Mass for the Holy Day of Mary, the Mother of God. It’s important to ask why the Church has us begin each new civil year pondering Mary’s Motherhood. Most of us, on the vigil of the feast, December 31, give our attention not to Mary to the last year, as we look to what the year about to finish has brought us, the good memories, the difficult crosses. We recall with joy the happy times, the births, the weddings, the reunions, the achievements in school or work or elsewhere. We also remember with some sadness the deaths or sufferings of loved ones, the pain of relationships and friendships that have broken down, the personal and familial consequences the pandemic, the economy and more. The reason why the Church proposes that we mark a Marian feast on this vigil is precisely because, as we see in St. Luke’s recounting of the Gospel of the Shepherds, Mary teaches us how to “contemplate things in our heart,” to “treasure” the graces, to ponder the Crosses. All the events of 2021 are meant to be taken to our prayer, be brought to the Lord, be internalized in a way that binds us ever more to God, but few of us profit from the events of our life in this prayerful way. Mary, the mother of God and our Mother, is looked to by the Church each December 31 as an icon of how not to let so many of the graces of the past year just pass away.
- Likewise, on January 1, most of us look ahead wondering what the new year will bring. We look forward with excitement to graduations or retirements, to long-desired proposals and weddings, to the births of kids, grandkids or younger brothers and sisters, to pilgrimages and vacations, to new friends, experiences and loves, hopefully for an end to the pandemic and its many hardships and to a better year economically for ourselves or so many we know who are struggling. We also might look ahead with a little trepidation hoping that certain things will not occur, like a terrorist attack, a fire or burglary, a drunk driver, a terrible call by in the middle of the night by a hospital or the state police, the funerals of loved ones. As we look ahead blindly, not knowing what the year will bring, the Church also has us focus on the Mother of God, because she shows us how to approach all of these events with a trusting faith, that the Father of her Son is the Lord of history, and that everything — both what seems adverse or propitious — works out for the ultimate good for those who love God. The Blessed Virgin Mary helps us to look back on the previous year and ahead to the one that’s beginning as a believer, as someone in communion with the Lord should and does. She shows us how to be grateful and hopeful, how to live not merely through the passing of time, but live in the fullness of time, in the fullness her Son brings. These are key lessons for the Christian life, lessons on which we need constant reminders, lessons that are particularly important on pensive occasions like New Year’s Eve and Day. That’s why going to Mass on this Solemnity, with Mary to thank God for the graces of the past year and for the blessings he has in store for us in the next, most especially the gift of his presence and accompaniment through the peaks and the valleys, is so important. It helps us, like Mary, to reflect on all of these events prayerfully in our heart and, like the Shepherds, to return from Mass glorifying and praising God for all that we have seen and heard.
- Mary also teaches us how to ponder the meaning of the visit of the wise men to Bethlehem, which is the consequential conversation the Lord has with us in the Gospel on the Epiphany, as we stay with Mary and Joseph after the shepherds leave and receive the Magi. The wise men show us several lessons that can become excellent New Year’s Resolutions to help us live 2022 as a true year of the Lord.
- The first thing we learn from the wise men is the importance of seeking God. When they saw the star at its rising, they not only interpreted that God was trying to communicate something to them in general, but that God was specifically heralding the birth of the newborn King in the east, who would be a universal king. The stars as we know were incredibly important to ancients. 2000 years ago, in the deserts of the Middle East and on the seas, people were highly dependent on the fixed stars in the sky as references for their direction. They firmly believed that God had made them this way for that reason. Whenever anything happened in the sky that was new — like the appearance of a comet, or meteor shower, or a planet’s or star’s shining more brightly — the ancients thought that it had to bear some message from God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. When they saw a star at its rising, they didn’t respond as curious astrologers but as those who hungered to find what they sought. Led by the star, and their simple faith in its meaning, the wise men went on a journey toward the Holy Land. We don’t know how long their pilgrimage took, but the Gospel suggests that it wasn’t brief. After Herod asked them the exact time of the appearance of the star, and then, a short time later, after they did not return to him, he proceeded to kill every boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. They made a journey of likely more than a year each way because they believed God was speaking to them through the star. 2022 is an opportunity for us to make a commitment to seeking, finding, loving Christ who has come into the world.
- The second thing the wise men show us is that the life of faith is a pilgrimage. They were ready to move. Even though they must have had good lives where they were since they could afford a long journey and precious gifts at their arrival, they accounted being with the newborn universal king more important than staying put. They were willing to leave everything behind and make a long, difficult journey, following the star they had seen in the East. They also show us that this pilgrimage of life is not one that we’re supposed to make alone. They knew that it order to make the destination they needed each other, but more than that, they wanted to journey together. Similarly, the Catholic pilgrimage of faith is not a do-it-yourself thing, but a family journey. We need the help of others in the search for God, as we pass through the various deserts, hills and valleys of life. Spouses need each other. Children need their parents. We all need our friends and spiritual siblings. We belong, as we pray at Mass, to the “pilgrim Church on earth,” and we’re called to live and move in communion, trying not to leave anyone behind. 2022 is a time to commit to that pilgrimage, together with others.
- Third, Magi shows us that we need to be guided on the path of faith. They got to Bethlehem because they had allowed themselves to be guided by the star. They were attentive and obedient to the guidance God had given them. Likewise, we all need to be guided. God guides us in Sacred Scripture, he guides us through his Church, he guides us by the saints, he guides us in prayer. To be guided means we’re not trying to control the destination and the route, that we are willing to accept God on his terms, not on ours. When the wise men found Jesus, he was far from what they must have been expecting. They likely expected to find the newborn king in a palace, not in a stable; wrapped in royal silk, not in swaddling clothes; surrounded by courtiers, not animals and shepherds. Yet when they found him as he was, they didn’t turn back. They were willing to let their own categories be changed by God rather than to fit God into their own categories. God’s ways are not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be. God is different. 2022 is a time to commit ourselves to be guided by God, like the wise men were, like Mary and Joseph were.
- Fourth, the Magi teach us all about how to love God. The greatest gift they gave the baby Jesus was not gold, frankincense and myrrh, but themselves. St. Matthew tells us that they prostrated themselves and did him homage. They adored him. That’s what we’re called to do as well. The same Jesus before whom they prostrated themselves comes to our altar, dwells in the tabernacles of our Churches. 2022 is a time to commit ourselves to come to prostrate ourselves and lay ourselves and our gifts in humble homage before him, and at the same time receive the blessing that Christ in all his Eucharistic humility wants to give us to help us continue on the journey.
- Lastly, the Magi show us, in short, how the encounter with Christ is meant to change us. St. Matthew says that the wise men returned home “by another route,” which the great saints of the Church have always said points to far more than a detour to evade Herod. It points to the fact that they returned changed, differently than they arrived, converted more and more to the new King’s way and categories, to the way of faith, to the way of Christ-like love. Every encounter with Christ in the Mass, in prayer and the other sacraments, is meant to be similarly consequential, by bringing us into communion with God in life, following no longer our own way but following Jesus’ own path up close.
- As we prepare for both consequential conversations this weekend, to journey not just once but twice to Bethlehem, the Lord wants us to help us, like Mary, ponder all these things in our hearts and to leave glorifying God and transformed for the better. At Church we will meet in the Holy Eucharist the same Lord before whom the Shepherds and the Magi prostrated themselves as a small, poor, vulnerable infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, the one who has been with us throughout 2021, who will be there for us in 2022, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Let us, therefore, go with haste to Bethlehem to adore him! And let us with excitement and wonder try to bring others along with us.
The Gospels on which today’s homily was based were:
The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph,
and the infant lying in the manger.
When they saw this,
they made known the message
that had been told them about this child.
All who heard it were amazed
by what had been told them by the shepherds.
And Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.
Then the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen,
just as it had been told to them.
When eight days were completed for his circumcision,
he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel
before he was conceived in the womb.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,
in the days of King Herod,
behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,
“Where is the newborn king of the Jews?
We saw his star at its rising
and have come to do him homage.”
When King Herod heard this,
he was greatly troubled,
and all Jerusalem with him.
Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,
He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it has been written through the prophet:
And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
since from you shall come a ruler,
who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
Then Herod called the magi secretly
and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.
He sent them to Bethlehem and said,
“Go and search diligently for the child.
When you have found him, bring me word,
that I too may go and do him homage.”
After their audience with the king they set out.
And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,
until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
and on entering the house
they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
Then they opened their treasures
and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they departed for their country by another way.
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