RESOLVING TO LIVE AS GOD’S CHILDREN
Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
A video I saw recently has a four-year old say she has “problems with new year resolutions”! Ah! Doesn’t she speak for all of us?
But the wise one says resolutions are problems not because she’s “bad at them” but because “most people think that’s it… it’s the one time to change.” Resolutions are not about that “one big moment” but working through several little ones.
What could be a good new year resolution?
In the second reading, Paul recalls a fundamental truth of our faith: the incarnation has freed us and enabled us to be adopted as sons and daughters of God. A good new year resolution (and one we need to make every year) is to realize more fully this new life as children of God.
How do we do this? The gospel presents Mary as a model of this new life! Mary said “yes” to God. She did not understand the immensity and implications of that “yes” which was not restricted to that “one big moment” but involved several little (and difficult) yeses.
How did Mary live her mission? The gospel tells us after the shepherds narrated what the angels had said, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” After the boy Jesus was found in the temple, we read again “his mother treasured all these things in her heart.”
Mary treasured the word of God and pondered it to discern his will for her at every stage in her life as his handmaid.
For us, too, life’s choices are rarely clear. We often cannot understand what God wants of us. The example of Mary shows us how to live out our calling as children of God.
Let me today resolve to listen more to the voice of God, to treasure his word, and ponder it in my heart. Then shall I be able to realize my new year resolution of a new life in union with God.
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