The afternoon was bleak and cold. A deep exhaustion I’d been unable to shake for months finally forced me to succumb to a nap, something I didn’t often have the luxury of doing as a mom of two young children. I crawled under the covers, tossing and turning in a fit of restlessness, feeling lazy for lying there while so many responsibilities beckoned. Why couldn’t I get it together?
In this feverish haze of self-criticism, so typical in a world that glorifies productivity and often questions — even shames — times of rest, I asked God for help, though I wasn’t even sure what I needed from him. Suddenly, a soothing feeling came over me and an image of Mary arose in my mind.
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“You’re tired,” she said. Though no sound was heard, her words fell silently into my weary heart with that gentle strength she is so well-known for, as she reached out her hand to touch my forehead. The cool sensation had an immediate effect; my troubled thoughts ceased and I fell asleep. I awoke refreshed, and the next day, the tiredness that had plagued me, both mind and body, was completely gone.
With the new year approaching, this experience has sprung to the forefront of my devotional time. The day after Christmas, conversations often turn to New Year’s goals and resolutions. Before we even come up for air from the frenzy of the holiday season, we begin planning all that we need to do and accomplish in the next 365 days. We can find ourselves stretched too thin under the demands of being human in a busy world, often hard on ourselves for “failing” to keep up.
While it is always good to hope for a fresh start and to make the most of our time (Ephesians 5:16), I have also been thinking how it would reflect the heart of God if our year began with a respite, rather than the usual run into the next activity. As a new Catholic, I was intrigued to learn of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on January 1 as a time of reflection on Mary and the newborn Christ child.
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The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God at the doorway to the new year invites us to put down our to-do list and gather around our Blessed Mother, with Jesus now in her arms, and linger over the Christmas story. While the world speeds on, we are invited to sit alongside her and ponder all she heard and saw at his birth — the true treasures stored up in her heart for us.
What if we let the wonder of it all seep deeply into our weariness and wariness from living in a world increasingly divided, wounded, and uncertain. A cup of tea, a warm blanket, and the collective sigh of a people at rest in the presence of their mother and brother, a sigh that empties the body to make room — for joy, hope, and the greatest of miracles: Jesus, who has come for us and will one day come again. As I do, I find myself asking, “Who is Mary, really? Who is this Mother of God? And why does it feel so important to know at this time?”
In “Joy to the World: How Christ’s Coming Changed Everything (And Still Does),” Scott Hahn writes that Mary has many grand names, including “Comforter of the Afflicted” and “Mystic Rose.” Hahn says these titles radiate her glory, but if we want to know her as she truly is, we have to return to Nazareth, to the girl “who was, in many respects, an ordinary girl…” before the Annunciation that called her into extraordinary circumstances.
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As I meditate on this young girl, not yet God-bearer, my heart is stirred by her aliveness in the present moment, the absence of plans and pressure that enabled her to carry on a conversation with an angel when the opportunity presented itself. Imagine if Mary had been too busy to hear what Gabriel had to say. I feel the pull to heave off the expectations to produce and perform that have crept in. To begin my new year with the same quiet serenity that makes room in my heart to hear from God, as she did, and let that word guide my course, not with striving but with a holy wonder and surrender that refreshes and renews.
Without the pressure of Christmas activity, I imagine the manger, the fresh scent of hay, the moonlit sky, and Mary as the girl she was before she said “yes” to being the Mother of the Savior of the World. The realization humbles me with a heavenly hope: In Christ, I am enough. I am loved. And so are you.
