topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (C)
01 January 10
 


 

When the famous American preacher, the Reverend Doctor Billy Graham, was 80 years old and Parkinson’s disease was first beginning to exhibit its debilitating effects, leaders from Dr. Graham’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite native-born son to a luncheon in his honor.  Dr. Graham hesitated in accepting the invitation initially because of his struggles with the disease.  But, leaders of the City of Charlotte insisted, “We don’t expect a major address.  Just come and let us honor you.”  So, Dr. Graham agreed to travel to his hometown.

After hearing all of the many wonderful things the speakers had to say about him, Dr. Graham stepped up to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and said, “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time magazine as the ‘Man of the Century.’”  Then Dr. Graham began to tell the tale of a train trip the aging, Noble Prize winning physicist was making from Princeton, New Jersey.  After the train left the station, the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger.  When he came to Albert Einstein, the world-renowned physicist reached into his vest pocket but he couldn’t find his ticket.  So Einstein reached into the pockets of his trousers.  The ticket wasn’t there either, so Einstein began foraging through his briefcase, but he still couldn’t find the ticket.  Albert Einstein then checked the seat beside him.  He still couldn’t find his ticket.

The conductor said, “Dr. Einstein, I know who you are.  We all know who you are.  I’m sure you bought a ticket.  Dont worry about it.”

Einstein nodded appreciatively.  The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets.  As he was ready to move to the next car, the conductor turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.  The conductor rushed back and said, “Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, I told you ‘Don’t worry, I know who you are.  No problem.  You don’t need a ticket.  I’m sure you bought one’.”

Einstein looked up at the conductor and said, “Young man, I too, know who I am.  What I don’t know is where I’m going.”

Having told that story, Dr. Graham continued, “See the suit I’m wearing?  It’s a brand new suit.  My children and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age.  I used to be a bit more fastidious.  So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion.  You know what that occasion is?  This is the suit in which I’m going to be buried.  But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to remember the suit I’m wearing.  I want you to remember this: “I not only know who I am...but I also know where I’m going.”

Although both men—one a world-renowned physicist and the other a world-renowned preacher—knew who they were, the former had no idea where he was going while latter knew exactly where he was going.

Contrary to what many believe, Albert Einstein was no atheist.  In fact, he once wrote: “To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive form, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”  The physicist went on to say that a person who does not experience the mysterious “might as well be dead,” noting, “My religion consists of the humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit, who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”  Then, when interviewed for an issue of the Saturday Evening Post in 1929 and asked what he thought about Jesus Christ, Einstein responded, “I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.  His personality pulsates in every word.  No myth is filled with such life....”

There is no doubt that Albert Einstein was acutely sensitive to the mysterious—to the spiritual—but for some unknown reason, he could not, would not, and did not embrace God’s mysterious presence in his life by making an act of faith.  Neither did Einstein allow God’s mysterious presence to transform his consciousness to see the God who created all that Einstein’s brilliant mind was able to grasp.  The physicist experienced the stirrings of faith but, in so far as his biographers know, Einstein was never able to allow those stirrings to become an act of faith that, in turn, could transform his consciousness so that Einstein could perceive God’s presence alive and active in his life.  As a result, Albert Einstein knew who he was.  But, spiritually speaking, the world-renowned physicist didn’t know where he was going.

Today’s Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, turns the tables not on Albert Einstein but on us.  We are believers who are sensitive to the mysterious—to the spiritual, as Albert Einstein was.  But, unlike the Nobel laureate, we have made an act of faith evidencing itself today because, after all, we are here in church today while most of our fellow co-religionists are relaxing comfortably in their homes thinking about the holiday parades, bowl games, and chowing down all of that snack food!  As good as that act of faith is, however, the important question today’s solemnity asks us is: Have we allowed our sensitivity to the mysterious and act of faith to transform our consciousness so that we see God’s presence in our daily lives?

We have just celebrated the great solemnity of the Incarnation—not a social and political invention like the so-called “Winter Celebration,” “Festivus,” or “Kwanza”—where, as St. Athanasius said, “God became human in order that humans might become like God” (in Greek, qhwsis).  As we contemplate that mystery—the mystery of the God who became human—the mystery of the God’s unending and undiminishing love for us made incarnate in Jesus Christ—we recall today that it was Mary—the Mother of God—who made the Incarnation possible.  Her faith—not just a sensitivity to the mysterious (like Einstein and us) or an act of faith (like us but not like Einstein) but also a willingness to allow faith to transform her consciousness—enabled her to say, “Let it be done unto me according to Your will.”  This is what today’s challenges us to consider.

Mary is the model—the paradigm, if you will—of what it means to be a person of faith.  Mary knew who she was, not only through her sensitivity to the divine and making an act of faith but also through her willingness to allow her faith to transform her consciousness so that Mary recognized God’s presence alive and active in all of those very mysterious situations that God thrust upon Mary at various points in her life.  These included worrisome events including the Annunciation and the Visitation.  These also included gruesome and pain-filled events like the Crucifixion and burial of her son, Jesus.  When the angel told Mary she would conceive, she believed and accepted God’s will.  When an angel told her husband, Joseph, to take his family to Egypt, Mary believed and accepted God’s will.  They were also meticulously careful about keeping Jewish observance.  They made pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the yearly feasts.  They offered the prescribed sacrifices, etc., including having Jesus circumcised according to the law and giving him the name prescribed by the angel Gabriel in the vision.  It is in this sense that Mary lived her faith as she saws seeing God’s presence in the events of her life.

More important than these acts of faith—similar to us coming to church today—Mary allowed her faith to transform her consciousness. In all of the events surrounding the conception, birth, life, and death of God’s only begotten Son, Mary sought to discover the divine meaning and purpose behind every joy and sorrow, every word and gesture.  Don’t forget that Mary accompanied her son to Jerusalem and then to Calvary and assisted in interring his body in the tomb.  The Mother of God listened for, heard, believed, and observed God’s presence in everything—the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.  We heard this in today’s Gospel passage when St. Luke reminds us: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2: 19).

Unlike Albert Einstein and perhaps some of us at various times in our lives, Mary’s faith provided her a spiritual compass that enabled Mary to know exactly where she was going in terms of direction, although Mary clearly was uncertain about how events would unfold.  Confronted with the troubling and worrisome as well as the gruesome and painful, Mary did not wonder why God had abandoned her but, instead, did something that Einstein found himself incapable of doing and what today’s solemnity challenges us to do, namely, to trust in Divine Providence—God’s guiding purpose—as the uncertainties of fate and fortune unfolded in Mary’s life and as they unfold in our lives as well.

Don’t think for one minute that Mary was absolutely confident and understanding of what these mysterious events meant as they unfolded in her life.  Instead, St. Luke reminds us that Mary “pieced them together” (in Greek, sumballousa) in her heart, discovering little by little the great mystery God was revealing to her.  This mystery—Mary’s divine Motherhood—is certainly far from easy to understand using the human mind alone.

This is what Mary the Mother of God has to teach us today.  We need to understand with our hearts what our eyes and minds are incapable of perceiving or understanding on their own.  Sensitivity to the mysterious and making an act of faith can aid us to accept God’s mysterious presence in our lives.  But, like Mary, we will not entirely grasp God’s will—Divine Providence—until we ponder all of these things in the heart by piecing together and discovering what God is revealing to us in every aspect of our human experience.  Then, by following Mary’s example, we can our allow our sensitivity to the mysterious and our act of faith to be transformed by God’s presence alive and active in our lives.

While Albert Einstein was sensitive to the mystery of God, he succumbed to the temptation of discouragement and doubt when struggling with mystery.  Sadly, this kept the great physicist from ever making an act of faith that we know of and thus, Einstein was never transformed into an awareness of God’s mysterious presence and, although Einstein knew who he was, he didn’t have a spiritual compass to discern where he was going, spiritually speaking.  This solemnity of Mary, Mother of God which we celebrate each New Year’s day reminds us to be confident, like Mary, in seeking to move beyond being sensitive to the mysterious and making an act of faith—evident by our presence here today—and to advance in that knowledge of the heart where we piece together those mysterious events where God manifests His presence in every aspect of our daily lives.  This is where God makes His face shine upon us; this is how God is gracious to us; and, this is how God blesses us (Numbers 6:24-27).

Contemplating these things in our hearts and growing in the knowledge of the heart, all of those temptations, difficulties, and trials we encounter each day will not lead us to discouragement and doubt, as they did for Albert Einstein.  Instead, these will become moments wherein we will experience God’s presence in our lives and, like Mary, as we keep all these things and reflect on them in our hearts, we will know not only who we are—God’s beloved children—but will also know, like Mary and the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, where we are going—God is leading us to His kingdom.

 

 

 

mail2.gif (2917 bytes)      Does today’s homily raise any question(s) that you would like
                   me to respond to? Mail your question(s) by double clicking on
               
    the mailbox. I will respond to your question(s) at my first
                   available opportunity.


   Double click on this button to return to the homily
                                         webpage.