Dominican Nuns - Elmira, NY: Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

Mary, Mother of the New Creation

Homily by fr. Brian J. Pierce, OP promoter of the Dominican Nuns

The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning.” Today, January 1^st, we also find ourselves “in the beginning.” Life is full of beginnings. Maybe we remember beginning our first day of school, or our first job or our first kiss! Last week, on Christmas Eve, I helped my mother prepare a turkey to be baked in the oven. And then I assisted her as she combined many ingredients together to make a pecan pie – from scratch, from the beginning. Each time Mom began by gathering all the ingredients together, and one by one she created something that was beautiful and delicious. When God made the heavens and the earth “in the beginning,” God was also making something beautiful and delicious.

When a composer sits down to compose music he or she begins with a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, and musical notes that are collected, joined together and ordered to form music – beautiful music. An author or a poet does the same with words, just like a potter or a painter works with clay or different colors of paint. “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth… In the beginning God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Each year, in the springtime, farmers and gardeners till the earth in order to plant seeds to bring forth new life that will nourish us. Every spring is “a new beginning.” The cycle of planting, germination, flowering, harvest and eating is the cycle of life and death and new life. Every year we begin a new, and in this way we participate in God’s eternal cycle of life.

Every time we hear the words, “I forgive you” or “I am sorry, or “I absolve you of all your sins,” we celebrate a new beginning. In the past months we have seen a number of Arab countries struggling to know what it means to begin anew.

Today we celebrate the beginning of a New Year, but we do this by looking back and remembering another beginning – a beginning that took place in the virgin womb of a woman, named Mary. We know this story. It is an ancient story, and yet every year we come back to this story that reminds us of the beginning. When God chose Mary to be the mother of God, the mother of Jesus, God was planting the seeds of a new creation in her and in our universe. This is what our Gospel of Luke reminds of us today.

Advent and Christmas and New Year always bring us back to the Gospel of Luke, where we find so many of the stories that we have heard time and time again since our childhood. It is Luke’s Gospel that tells the story of Mary saying “yes” to God’s invitation to be the Mother of the Savior.
It is Luke who shows the pregnant Mary running hastily to visit her cousin Elizabeth after her visit from the Angel Gabriel. It is Luke’s Gospel that tells the story of Joseph and Mary on their journey from Nazareth “to the city of David called Bethlehem” (Lk 2:4). We are told that there was no room in the local inn for them, so they were left with no other option than to look for shelter in a nearby cave. It was there that Jesus was born, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a feeding trough.

Luke then pulls the camera back and allows us to see the hillsides surrounding Bethlehem, where “there were shepherds living in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them… and said, ‘Do not be afraid – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord’...” The shepherds quickly organize a pilgrimage to Bethlehem, saying, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us” (2:15). When they arrived and saw the child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, they knew that the world had been born anew.

Luke’s gospel invites us to open ourselves to the surprises of God’s Word. Tradition tells us that Luke was an artist, and today he invites us to be like a large, blank canvas, waiting for the painter’s colors to bring us to new life. For God, every moment, every day is a new beginning. God wants to sow the seeds of the new creation in us, inviting us to be part of the unfolding story of God’s creating and saving love. This is what we celebrate today. We celebrate Mary, who allowed her womb and her heart to be the place for the new creation to germinate and bear fruit.

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters” (Gen 1:1-2). For Luke, Mary’s womb is the new dark, virgin nothingness where God’s Holy Spirit sweeps over the waters and speaks the eternal Word. “In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” For those of us in the northern hemisphere, December and January are the months of darkness and cold. The dark, barren trees of a winter forest stand erect, waiting for the birth of the light that comes from the east. They lean gently in the direction of the new day, the new year, waiting for the morning sun to dress them in warmth and light. In Luke’s masterpiece, Mary is the Mother of “the Light of the world.” She is the Mother of the new creation that is being born. She is the Mater Dei, the Mother of God-made-flesh.

And today we, like the shepherds, have been invited by the angels to witness this great birth of the new creation. The shepherds were poor outcasts in the Biblical times, gypsie-like laborers forced to live in the hills and on the outskirts of town, rejected by society for their impure contact with the animals, and frequently accused of stealing the very sheep they were entrusted to take care of. They were not exactly the kind of people you’d invite to a baby shower! But Luke’s angels not only invite the shepherds to the baby shower, they anoint them as evangelizers, messengers of the gospel. In this story of the new creation, it is the poor, the little ones, who are called to be God’s chosen people, for – as we heard in Mary’s Annunciation – “nothing is impossible with God” (Lk 1:37).

So, with the shepherds we come to Bethlehem to see this miracle of new life, this miracle of a new day, a new year. In Bethlehem we see and touch and hear the Word that was spoken by God in the beginning – Jesus, the Savior. Our hearts – like theirs – are burning so ardently that we have no other option but to announce this gospel of joy to the world. For the shepherds, gathered on that dark hillside, watching their sheep, it is like experiencing a miraculous rising of the midnight sun. They who are nobodies are suddenly, thanks to God’s favor, anointed as prophets of the new-born Messiah.

This new birth can happen in any place, in fact, in every place. Every moment, every day can be a “new beginning.” We can say “yes” like Mary did, and let God sow in us the new creation.

Today we honor Mary, because she teaches us how to embrace our dark, barren emptiness, and wait for God’s life-giving Word, God’s light, to awaken in us the new creation. Like Mary, we too are called to give birth to the Word-made-flesh, and in this way, we also become mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters of the light. Today we are invited, along with the shepherds, to come to Bethlehem – the House of Bread. In this house we find both Bread and Word. We are part of a cosmic liturgy that feeds us and nourishes us to share God’s Good News with the world.

It is a new day, a new year, a “new beginning.” Today Mary gives birth to God-made-flesh, and today – God gives birth to the new heavens and the new earth. “Come, let us adore him. Venite, adoremus.”