An Empowering Love:
The Solemnity of Mary 2025
January 1, 2025
Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
These readings speak of blessing and holding onto gratitude and the importance of Mary and her role in Salvation history. She stands at the entrance of our new calendar year to guide all our activities. The Jesuits have a special place for Mary in the Spiritual Exercises because when we are at the limits of our human love and power, we turn to Mary and ask her to place us with her Son. She has a way of bringing us to him when we cannot do so. Also, the Jesuits honor this day because it is the circumcision of the infant when he was given the name Jesus as the angel intended. We hold this special because the Society was given the name Jesus as the name of our religious order, and so Mary’s place is special because of her closeness to her Son and to us.
Often in my prayer, when I’m stuck and not able to yet go to Jesus, I’ll call Mary and ask if I can come over for a visit. She is in her home and is busy about her day’s activities, but she always has time for me. When I arrive, we spend a great deal of time in small talk catching up on local and sometimes national events. We ask about family members, and then she pours me a cup of coffee and we sit down at the dinner table, and she asks, “What’s on your mind?” After I’m able to articulate it and receive her wisdom, I sometimes wimp out and ask if she can convey my thoughts to Jesus. She also says “No,” but she gives me the courage to go to him on my own. It helps. He typically warmly receives me, and she has prepared me for a deeper conversation. I appreciate how she guides me.
In the readings, Mary is perceived as a loving mother who silently cherishes tender memories in her heart. In this way, Mary is the Church’s first historian, and her love makes her a powerful woman because love is the most unknown power that has yet to be used to its fullest potential. Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is a radical song that overturns the forces of this world so that God’s love can reign. In that verse, the mighty are taken down and the lowly are lifted up. Those in human-desired power are shown not to have real power at all, and those who have been ignored and pushed to the side are brought back into the center and are exalted.
It is dismaying then that women in the church and society are not regarded with human equality. Women have remained faithful to the church’s mission. Women build, support, and maintain churches and their voices have been silenced by those in authority who hold clericalist attitudes and male privilege. Clericalism is the implicit assumption that those who have authority are not to be held to account for their actions and decisions as if they were isolated from or above the rest of the people of God. With women integrated into church structures, the Church will be able to incorporate practices of transparency and accountability as a new lifestyle. This will be the way the church upholds human dignity.
For too long, the image of Mary silently treasuring these important moments in her heart has been a predominant image. It is necessary. Perhaps we priests ought to be the silent ones so that we can hear the voices of those raised up in Mary’s Magnificat. Mary will indeed place us with her Son, and I think she has a lot to say to him first. Don’t you think it is time we listen to her and to the stories of the women, many of whom have acted heroically over the years?
On this first day of the new calendar year, we ask Mary to send her blessings to us along with her Son. We ask her to give us the courage to face the world as it is, and to seek and find her Son. We ask her to help us bring the power of human and love divine into the world because she knows the love is the power that overturns all that is not of God. We need to courage to act on it. When we do, we know that Mary will continue to cherish all these things in her heart. And smile.
I have never thought of Mary in such comfortable terms before, as you describe in your dinner table conversation. My wife grew up Catholic, and it damaged her, so when I told her I was entering an RCIA program she felt hurt in being and body. Now years later. thanks to recounting Daniel Berrigan and such, she has accepted and understood. We share some things, I lived in Gloucester, Ma. and currently live in Omaha. Your art inspires me. It's quite wonderful.
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