God's promise: blessing, grace and peace!
January 1, 2024: New Year, Mary Mother of God, and World day of Peace
Numbers 6: 22-27; Galatians 4: 4-7; Luke 2: 16-21
We are in the midst of a triple festivity today: the birth of a brand new year 2024, the person of Mary - Mother of God and the 57th World day of Peace in the Universal Church! On this auspicious day, we have a loving promise from the Lord - again a triple promise: Blessing, Grace and Peace, as the formula in the first reading from the book of Numbers teaches us.
BLESSING:
The Lord promises first of all, Blessings. How do we understand blessing? The antonym is a curse, that is wishing the destruction of someone. Blessing therefore is wishing that something good happens to the other.
The Lord's Holy Will is that we receive, and experience all that is good. Sometimes we may think that the Lord fails to send anything good our way. Blessings abound when the waiting is long. Permit me to share with you a funny forward that I enjoyed some time ago circulating on a social network: it was about a dog and an elephant which got pregnant together. In 60 days the dog delivered some ten puppies! It got pregnant again and delivered another 10 in after 60 days... then again... in fact, after half a dozen such cycles, the dog happened to meet the elephant. The elephant was still go around with the first baby in gestation (we know the elephants' gestation period is close to 600 days). The dog laughed at the elephant and asked, "did you check if you are really pregnant? I have already given birth to some sixty kids. Look at you!" The elephant with a solemn smile said, "but just imagine, when I deliver my kid, he would draw everyone's attention. When he crosses the road, everyone will stop in awe. When he stops and turns around humans would run for their life."
The longer the wait, the greater the blessing! The Lord has great things in store for us. Let us never get impatient and frustrated. Even amidst the toughest darkness, we need to keep our eyes fixed on the Lord and wait on the Lord with faith! The Lord promises blessing and they will surely come our way!
GRACE:
The second promise is Grace. What greater witness than the Mother of God, Mary who was called 'full of grace'. Understanding grace is another task we have today. What is grace? -Is grace a thing? an intention answered? a healing?... At times, we give into the misunderstanding of speaking about more graces and less graces, as if we count or weigh graces on scales.
Let us remind ourselves today, Grace is fundamentally the presence of God with us, the relationship that God establishes with us, the way that God enters our ordinary lives! That is why Mary was full of Grace: she bore the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Word made flesh, God made human in her womb. Mother of God, is what God made her! Theotokos - the bearer of God. In the fullness of time, God sent God's only son, born of a woman, declares St. Paul in the second reading. Why should God send God's Son? It is the way that God fulfilled God's own desire of being with the people of God, the children of God. I will be with you. I will never leave you; I will never forsake you, nor forget you, my people! Isn't that the promise that the Lord has given always?
The presence of God surrounds us, as much as we wish to have it. That presence never forces itself on us, nor does it choose to abandon us - the choice is ours. We choose it when we wish to remain with God, with the values that God proposes, with the ways that the Spirit of the Lord teaches us. That is grace, the state of grace, the grace-filled life. The Blessed Mother of God, teaches us as the bearer of God, the secret of remaining in grace, that is to bear Christ within us, to bear God all the time in our hearts and spirits.
PEACE:
The third promise is Peace. Celebrating as a Church the 57th World Day of Peace, Pope Francis invites us to reflect a bit on the theme - Artificial Intelligence and Peace. We are well aware that the Artificial Intelligence today is synonymous of the current progress in the scientific world, but is everyone equally sensitive about all its impact on the world today?
The year that has just past, has been treacherous in many ways, adding to the case of world war being fought in piecemeal, all over the world, with over 50 nations involved in some form of war or weaponed activity! Along with this the reckless rapidity with which the advancement of artifical intelligence is taken forward, is alarming to humanity and to the entire universe or the cosmic home. Apart from the varied concerns it causes, namely the threat to democracies, to the autonomy and dignity of human persons, and to the ethical balance of the world, there is a need that "the rapid development of forms of artifical intelligence will not increase cases of inequality and injustice all too present in today's world, but will help put an end to wars and conflicts, and alleviate many forms of suffering that afflect our human family."
The Prince of Peace is with us - the Son of God who has come into the world, pleading us to love, embrace and grow together towards fullness of life - only peace can make that happen. And it is the Lord alone, who can give us that peace!
Blessing, Grace and Peace - that is what the Lord is promising us in 2024. Let us claim that promise for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and for the entire world.
The Lord BLESS you and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be GRACIOUS to you;
The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you PEACE!
Amen.
