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Reflections from your Pastors
January 18, 2024
Dear members and friends of Mary of Magdala,
I pray that you are all keeping safe and warm in these nose-hair freezing temps! The homily I shared with you on Sunday, January 14, was a message I would like to have as many of you hear as we begin this New Year of 2024. Therefore, I am using it for today’s reflection. My hope is that all of us can spend some time in silence with the Holy One this month so that we might be reminded to be the person God created us to be. Our authentic selves, with God’s help, can transform the world.
May 2024 be a blessed year for all of you,
Mother Rosean
With the season of Christmas past, the real work of Christmas begins. As Howard
Thurman tells us in his poem “the work of Christmas.”
“When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart."
Yes, the same work that Jesus did, and the same work he gave to his first disciples, he has given to us. And what a mammoth task it is!
- Find the lost-- In the United States an estimated 460,000 children are reported lost or missing every year. (Global missing children's network)
- Heal the broken--In 2022, nearly 50 million Americans were experiencing mental illness. (Mental health America)
- Feed the hungry--statistics for year end 2022 show that nearly 44.2 million Americans lived in households “with hunger or food insecurity as their constant companion.” (Office of disease prevention and health promotion)
- To release the prisoner--The United States prison population was 1,230,100 on December 31, 2022. (Bureau of justice statistics)
- To rebuild the nations--12.4% of Americans now live in poverty according to new data from the 2022 United States Census. This is an increase from 7.4% in 2021. The Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 582,000 Americans experiencing homelessness in 2022.
- To bring peace among others--the 2.5 million encounters of migrants occurring at theUS- Mexico border in fiscal year 2023 represents a new historic high.
And these statistics are for the United States only, not the rest of the world.
To add to this, there are numerous ministries here at Mary of Magdala that would
welcome your participation in the new year: social justice, leadership council, lectors, eucharistic ministers, children and adult education, hospitality, finance, music, technology, and on and on. We can get overwhelmed by the needs of our siblings in Christ. So much so that my head is spinning, my gut is churning, and sometimes I just want to get off the merry-go-round.
Yet here we are at the beginning of 2024, and our readings are about answering God's call to us. Jesus invites, “Come and See!”, and the disciples go with him and “remained with him that day's quote Scripture tells us that they “remained with him that day.” How many of us sit with Jesus for an entire day-- listening, truly listening, for the voice of wisdom, the voice we can trust, the voice that guides us to do the work of Christmas?
The young Samuel, only 11 or 12 at the time was unfamiliar with the voice of God. Yet three times he answered, “Here I am.” The Hebrew word, “Hineni,” translates as “Here I am, or, “Here am I.” Biblical figures have used this word “Hineni,” throughout the centuries.
When God called “Moses! Moses!” from the burning bush, Moses answered, “Hineni -- “Here I am!” When the Angel Gabriel called Mary to be the mother of Jesus, she answered, “Hineni!” --“Here am I, the servant of God.”
At the beginning of the new year are you taking time to listen and see where God is
calling you? There are an infinite number of ways God can call you into service. Yet God calls us first and foremost to be the person God created us to be. This process is a spiritual journey in which you will learn new things about yourself and about your deepening relationship with God.
Please spend some time in this first month of the new year sitting and listening for the voice of God -- reminiscing about some of the dreams you have had, about the most consistent urging/nagging you have been getting during the past year, about the one thing you were born to understand, or about the passions you have not realized. Maybe you're an artist, but you're not painting, or sculpting. or acting, or any of the other artistic genres.
Maybe you're a writer, but you’ve put aside your love of writing for a job that pays the bills. Maybe you're a musician, but your guitar, drums, flute, etc. are sitting there gathering dust. And maybe you're full of the love of God and you want to share that love with God’s people.
We are often distracted by the messages of the world and other people. We are
bombarded by voices from all directions. There are so many places to be called to, but the first call is to be who God created you to be.
Listen to how profoundly simple God's words are in this passage from the Book of Job:
“God says to the snow, “Fall on the earth…so that everyone may know my work.”
The snow is only meant for and created to fall on the earth. Each of us are only meant for and created to be exactly who we are--weird and wonderful, imperfect and messy, lovely and loved. What do you do with the ease and lightness of falling snow? And remember Thurman’s words to “make music in the heart.”
In 2024, God calls you to become the person God created you to be. And that will transform the world.
Amen,
Mother Rosean
Photo courtesy of Fr. Tracy O'Sullivan.
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