New Year’s Day
January 1, 2007

    This is a day with many names. New Year’s Day, we commonly call it, but the Church calls it the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and Pope Benedict calls it the World Day of Peace. Happily, none of these names conflict with the other. I think they actually shed light on each other.

    It certainly seems right to begin a new year by turning to thoughts of peace. It speaks to the hope that lies deep within us and which refuses to die no matter how dim the prospects for peace. Even a cursory look at our world with all its wars and conflicts would say that the prospects of peace are dim indeed. But Christian hope doesn’t allow us to stay there. Christian hope, fueled by earnest prayer and by the works of justice, refuses to give up on peace. And so, at the beginning of a new year, even though we know how dismally we failed in achieving even a modest measure of peace in the past year, we allow ourselves to believe that this year could be different.

    And it could be. But only if peace first finds a home in our own hearts. The words of the anthem of the United Nations are right on the mark, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Peace will never find a home in our world unless it has first found a home in the heart of every human person.

    I thought of that as I listened, over the past couple of days, to the news coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein. So often, the reaction to this sorry event was one of unrestrained glee. For me, and, I’m sure, for many, it was just one more round in the endless cycle of violence and retribution. Surely there are other, more civilized and humane ways of doing justice, no matter how brutal the criminal or how heinous the crimes. How does a state-sanctioned execution do anything but further denigrate respect for human life? How are we not diminished when we support it or seek to justify it?

    And so, on this New Year’s Day of 2007, I dare to hope, and I think we all must, for a world where scores will be settled and wrongs righted differently. To quote Pope Benedict in his World Day of Peace statement: “The duty to respect the dignity of each human being, in whose nature the image of the Creator is reflected, means that the person cannot be disposed of at will…. Each individual human being has the dignity of a person; he or she is not just something, but someone…. Peace is ultimately based on respect for the rights of all…”

    My friends in Christ, we will do well at the beginning of this new year to turn to Mary whom we honor today as the Mother of God and our mother. In today’s gospel, she shows us the way by her prayerful pondering of the great mysteries she witnessed at the birth of her Son. She couldn’t have understood everything, and she couldn’t have begun to imagine what it all would mean as time unfolded, but she was quietly content to center herself in the unfolding mystery of God’s love and make herself available to be an instrument of that love.

    We honor Mary as the Queen of Peace and so we should. She brought into this world Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the one who would call peacemakers blessed, who would teach us to love our enemies and to offer no resistance to injury. He would himself be the victim of human hatred and cruelty at its worst but he practiced the gospel he preached, speaking words of forgiveness and love right to the end.

    My friends, I know all of this might sound hopelessly naïve, but it is the Christian gospel and it needs to influence our thinking even if it remains far from the realpolitik that informs the thinking of those who govern nations.

    I will conclude with a little parable that Archbishop Hunthausen liked to use. It goes like this:

    “Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal mouse asked a wild dove. “Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer. “In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal mouse said.

    “I sat on the branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow, not heavily, not in a raging blizzard. No, just like in a dream, without any violence. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,742,953. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing – the branch broke off.”

    Having said that, the coal mouse fled away. The dove, since the time of Noah an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while and mused aloud: “Perhaps there is only one person lacking in order for peace to come about in the world…!”

    Perhaps the dove was right.

Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor

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