I love New Year’s Day. I love new beginnings, fresh starts, the first page of a clean new journal. I love the idea of resolutions: the promise of new habits and the new happiness and order they will bring to my life.
I am not alone: last night, Times Square was filled to capacity, and millions more watched on television as the ball dropped, signaling an end to 2018 and the beginning of 2019. It was a night of celebration and revelry; for many the penultimate holiday celebration, ushering in the promises of newness: New Year, New You, New Resolutions and hopes and dreams to plan and unpack.
Yet, just three weeks from today, January 21st, is Blue Monday, “The Most Depressing Day of the Year.” By the third Monday of January, it seems, conditions have converged to create a cocktail of depression. One is the dreary weather; another the post-holiday let down, and then the arrival of the post-holiday credit card bills. (I am sure that fact that it is a Monday doesn’t help). But the biggest factor? By the third week in January most have failed to keep their new resolutions, and as a result have abandoned hope in their new happiness.
Today, January first and New Year’s Day, the Church presents for our contemplation the mystery of Mary, Mother of God. At first, it seems something of a mismatch. If there was anyone who didn’t need New Year’s resolutions, it was the Immaculate Conception. Conceived without sin, she had no faults to renounce: she didn’t need to resolve to give up gossip, or gluttony, or even to give more of herself to God. And it is hard to picture Our Lady promising to eat fewer carbs or even to exercise more: surely the fully pregnant mother who rode on a donkey all the way to Bethlehem didn’t need to get more fit, or to do more penance.
Yet when we entrust to Mary the Mother of God, our resolutions, we increase exponentially the likelihood of our keeping them. First, because her intercession is invaluable in anything we wish to accomplish or offer. Second, because in her role as Mother of God, she models for us how to keep them.
How can this be, for we who know too well the reality of sin?
The answer for the Christian is not a how or a what but a Who. The child gestated in the womb of a Virgin, laid in the manger and held in her arms, first in Bethlehem and ultimately at Calvary, is Emmanuel: God is With Us.
God is With Us. Not just in the new, but in the now. Not with our future perfected or improved selves, or hobnobbing with the People We Ought To Be, but right now, in this imperfect moment.
Says Sister Wendy Beckett: “I would say that the essential test of whether you are a Christian is whether you actually pray. If you don’t pray you don’t truly believe. You believe in some kind of God who is an evil God because if you truly believe in the real God, then you want to be close to Him.” Yikes.
It is in the Baby in the manger, the Baby cradled in Mary’s lap, nursing at her breast, that we can find the confidence to draw close to God without fear.
A baby changes everything.
Even a merely human baby has a remarkable power to effect change. Voices are softened, curses omitted, touch becomes more gentle and loving. Mothers addicted to nicotine or caffeine or alcohol in excess suddenly quit cold turkey when they become aware of the life growing within them. Fathers who are “tough guys” melt into mush holding their child. Parents can attest that what willpower could not accomplish, the needs of their child effects quickly: getting up earlier, giving up more of their time, sacrificing more of their money for someone other than self.
Father Richard Veras notes in his book Jesus of Israel: Finding Christ in the Old Testament that this experience of parenthood, this change effected by ENCOUNTER, is in fact the model of Christianity, not resolution fueled by willpower alone. It is the encounter with Christ that changes us, that both inspires our right resolutions and empowers us to effect them.
If there is one resolution that will change your life definitively, it is to adopt the habit of daily prayer. To spend some time, like Mary, reflecting on the mystery of Emmanuel. To be present to the God that is always with you. To allow Him to transform you, to make you new. Sister Wendy again, not mincing words: “My filth crackles as He seizes hold of me.”
Gretchen Rubin, in her book Better than Before, writes about habits, and what helps and hinders them. Much of her advice applies well to cultivating a habit of prayer. Make the habit specific and concrete, she advises. Set a specific time for prayer (morning habits are more likely to be kept, she notes). Make the habit itself specific (for example, replace “to pray more” with “I will pray for fifteen minutes a day.”) Make it a daily habit: “What I do every day matters more than what I do once in awhile.” (p.80)
Let Our Lady teach you how to pray. (She taught Jesus, after all…) Let her hand you the Christ Child to hold, even without words, and just be present and ponder the mystery.
Finally, as Gretchen Rubin notes, the time for a new habit is Now. Not in tomorrow, which as the orphan Annie reminds us, is “always a day away.” The Good News is, literally, God is With Us Now. Not in the museum of the past, nor in a perfect future, but in very moment in which we reside.
On this her feast day, let us invoke Mary’s maternal intercession as we pray for the two most important moments of our life: “Holy, Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now, and at the hour of our death, Amen.”
Image Credit:
Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato [Public domain or CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato [Public domain or CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
Frassati Reflections 