Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

Saturday December 31, 2005

Time to Get On Board
there’s enough room for everyone.

When I was a kid, I used to love to stand at the rear of the old Lackawanna train to New York or on the Christopher Street ferry watching intently as the images of people and buildings diminished and finally disappear into the memory of the past. It was a mesmerizing experience.

However, I enjoyed even more the view from the front of the train right next to the engineer’s cabin or at the bow of the ferry. The anticipation of new images beyond the horizon or around the bend unleashed adrenaline and increased the excitement of what was ahead. Even as a kid, I preferred living in the future than in the past!

But the real thrill of my life was triggered by the initially unwelcome assignment to Rome for graduate studies almost forty-four years ago, an assignment that would necessitate a voyage by sea to a world I had never seen before — at least not live and in person — in a city that was called ‘eternal.’

I still have very vivid memories of the faces of family and friends as we slipped away from the dock at 44th Street into the Hudson River. As we sailed under the unfinished Verazzano Bridge, I stood at the stern watching the Isle of Manhattan diminish and slowly disappear letting go of past fears and failures. But the most precious memories of the past seemed to intensify with the increasing awareness that I would not return for at least three years.

Oh, I know, it wasn’t as if I was going off to war or that my life was in jeopardy notwithstanding the hurricane that we would encounter for three days on the high seas. There were moments when I thought we would see the bottom of the sea before we would see the coast of Portugal!

As the hurricane subsided, I made my way to the bridge of the ship high above the bow and looked intently for the coast of Portugal. Patience has never my strength when it comes to the anticipation of future events. There were moments when I could see the coast but it was only a mirage.

In those days, I thought I knew where I was going. Although I didn’t have a plan or program, I had a vision and an image of what I would face on the other side. At times it was a romantic view — some day I’ll be pope! At other times, it was quite the opposite — I’ll return a failure in disgrace. Of course the outcome was neither because God’s ways are not our ways – Thank God!

As we enter this new “year of grace” we need to stand at the stern of the ship and look back over the past year — perhaps over all the years as far as our memory can take us. We need to allow some memories to disappear into the past, especially the memory of wounds that may have diminished our sense of self or self-esteem and the memory of wounds we have inflicted on others but for which we have long since repented.

Still at the stern, we need to recall the image of precious people and recapture ‘learnings’ that animate and revitalize our inner spirit without imparting a false sense of security. These are the memories that give us the courage to move to the bow of the ship; to face the future undaunted, with openness to what can be rather than would should have been. Hurricanes happen but these and other of life’s hurtles are not insurmountable.

On this New Years Day, we honor Mary whose ‘Fiat’ – “Let it be done to me according to your word,” might well be adopted as an ‘article of faith,’ that is, an expression of our conviction that nothing can happen this year that God and we can’t handle together.

We are not only at the start of another New Year but also at the doorway to what may be called “opportune time” — kairos time. Kairos means opportunity. Jesus came once chronologically in Bethlehem, but he comes constantly at opportune moments in our lives, and most unexpectedly.

I suggest that we begin this new year as an opportunity for conversion — ever a necessity and always a possibility. Little did I ‘know’ what I would experience during those exciting years of Vatican II. I arrived in Rome as a brash ‘know-it-all’ neophyte priest and left three years later a humbled, converted servant of the Word, far from perfect and that was the greatest learning.

There are still many in the Church, leaders among them, who forty-four years later still have not grasped the message nor appreciated the grace of that extraordinary council. They remain prophets of doom defensively entrenched in rigidity and unyielding legalism. “They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to life a finger to move them…” [Matt 23:2-4 fg.]

The Feast of Mary, Mother of God is a Catholic feast, to be sure, but New Years Day is for everyone—Christians, Jews, Moslems; Republicans and Democrats; Presidents, premiers and primates; Americans, Africans, Arabs and Asians; for all who claim God as their own—Eloim, Jehovah, Allah.

This day of new beginnings is about the acknowledgement of God as Creator, father and mother of all humanity, our common God — our God who wants to be in communion with all humanity.

If as Catholics we could fully appreciate the reason for the season, we might spend more time finding ways not to keep people out but to bring people in. Were we to trust more in God’s wisdom than in human enterprise, we might find more effective ways to make room at the table for everyone.

All aboard!

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