This has been a tumultuous year, to say the least. More than that, it seems that 2017 has been an arrogant year.
As the meme says, "Every day we stray further from God's light."
The arrogance of our age is stunning. It is the arrogance that cannot consider the possibility it might be wrong, or not entirely right. The arrogance that saw Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump as the two candidates for President. The arrogance that ignores science in favor of personal opinion, such as denying that the child in the womb is a human person, or denying that the earth is a globe in orbit of Sol.
It is the arrogance each one of us is guilty of when we oppose God, making idols of ourselves.
It is arrogance entirely countered by the woman with whom we start our year, who we celebrate today as Matriarch of the Holy Family, and tomorrow as Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Mother of God.
He has scattered the proud in their conceit...
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones...
The rich he has sent away empty...
This arrogance is the way of the world. To do for yourself, to take care of you and yours at the expense of the other.
As we prepare for this new year, let us recommit ourselves to be humble, biddable, meek, docile to the will of God. Recall that "meek" describes not the doormat, but the warhorse. Humble describes not the worthless, but the grounded.
He has looked with favor on his humble servant...
He has lifted up the humble...
He has filled the hungry with good things...
He has remembered his promise of mercy...
This is the God of our Fathers and our Mothers. This is the God who seeks to love us and to be loved by us in return, who asks of us that we be humble enough to acknowledge that He is God, and we are not.
This is the God who exalted the humble virgin from a minuscule backwater province to be the Theotokos.
Let us commit ourselves to a year of humility, allowing God to take us and make what he will of us, and through us, the whole world.
I leave you with an excerpt from tomorrow's communion Antiphon, taken from Zechariah 9.9 and Psalm 34(33):
I sought the Lord and he answered me;
from all my terrors he set me free.
This lowly one called; the Lord heard,
and rescued him from all his distress.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
those whose spirit is curshed he will save.
The Lord ransoms the souls of his servants.
All who trust in him shall not be condemned.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
