Happy and New?
Think Again

by Rev. Euly B. Belizar, Jr., SThD

Every beginning of a year I’m always tempted to call out, “We say, ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ But is the yearly noisy merrymaking all there is to happiness? Are our new acquisitions, new cars, new clothes, new pairs of shoes, new year’s resolutions and other externals all there is to being new?” This is the challenge that thinking people, the young ones and the young once, ask: Is HAPPY NEW YEAR really HAPPY and NEW? Is it a reality or just a stale wish? I once greeted my spiritual director in high school seminary, “Happy New Year, Father!” His answer was as quick as it was startling, “It’s up to you!” I thought it was a witty way of saying that what we do with our lives is one big factor to making our year happy and new, save for the fact that very often even our best decisions and actions don’t translate into happiness or even newness.

What or who really makes us happy and new? We don’t have to rack our brains for the answer. Right. Only God does. Because of this we start the year, for example, with the celebration of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Why? Because she is filled with God. She is our example and model par excellence of the truly happy person with an endlessly new freshness in her. The archangel Gabriel describes her characteristic situation at the Annunciation by the Greek greeting “kecharitomene”, (“Hail, favored one. The Lord is with you” [Lk 1:28]). In truth, the Lord was dwelling in her womb as he has always been dwelling in her whole person. When we say she is the Blessed Virgin Mary, we have to remember that ‘blessed’ is another expression of the original Greek ‘favored one’ which is translated into the Latin ‘beata’, that is, ‘happy’. Mary is happy because her whole self, her whole life is filled with the Lord’s presence. God’s presence in her womb makes happiness possible for others too. So says Elizabeth in Lk 1:44: “For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy.”

The book of Numbers confirms this conviction that blessedness comes from God because the very blessing God asks Moses to bestow on Israel is one that points to God himself and his acts among his people and the world. “The Lord said to Moses: ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: This is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you! The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!” (Numb 6:22-26). Experts of the Scriptures say that these words are, in a real sense, revelatory of God as Trinity and of the Triune God’s distinct acts as Father, namely, being Creator and Protector; as Son, namely, being Revealer of Truth (of God and of man); and as Holy Spirit, namely, being Inspirer and Source of Peace. St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians tells us that the life of this Triune God was given to us, as “adopted sons”, through the Son born on Christmas Day but that this Son was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4) who, we know, is Mary.

If someone helped you get a promotion at work or in your career or profession you will, no doubt, be very grateful to that person. Mary helped us obtain the highest and most undeserved promotion from being ‘images and likenesses of God’ to being ‘children of God’ by consenting to be the Mother of God’s Son. For this reason we owe Mary an immeasurable and eternal debt of gratitude. Indeed for this reason alone we owe Mary every expression of honor we can give, otherwise known as ‘hyperdulia’ (the highest honor/veneration given to a human being, higher than that we give to the saints) but not equal to the worship we render only to God himself, otherwise called ‘latria’.

A saying has it that the greatest honor we give a person is imitating that person. The evangelist Luke tells us that one essential character of Mary worth imitating is her total openness to God, especially as reflected in her deeply prayerful attitude to the events surrounding her life and that of her Son Jesus. Luke’s expression, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Lk 2:19) is another way of saying Mary was a deeply prayerful person since she constantly listened to God.

Prayer, according to the experience of the Mother of God, the happiest and the ever new ‘solitary boast of our race’, is listening not only to what God is saying by word, i.e., through the Scriptures, but also to what he is saying non-verbally, i.e., through the events of life. Mary stands out as a pray-er or person who prays: constantly open and humbly submissive to God in everything. From the very beginning Mary is filled with God whose presence allowed no trace of original sin to touch her. There is little wonder, then, that she became the Mother of God. But also because of her openness to God who is the Fount of all Truth, in Mary we find perfect peace. In fact, who can forget that being Mother of God, Mary is also Mother of the Prince of Peace? This year’s papal theme expresses it: “In truth, peace”.

Pope Benedict XVI in his first message on the 2006 World Day of Peace, says that peace is founded on the truth, truth about God and truth about who we are. For example he says that there are two present threats to peace in our world: nihilism and fundamentalism, the root of terrorism. Both teach us lies about God and ourselves. Nihilism denies “God’s existence and his provident presence in history”; fundamentalism strives to impose its perceived truth(s) about God and thus “disfigures his loving and merciful countenance, replacing him with idols made in its own image” (Benedict XVI, “The Problem of Truth and Untruth is Concern of Every Man and Woman,” Message for ’06 World Day of Peace, n. 10). In consequence, these two threats try to make us believe two lies: that we can either live without God or impose on others, even by violent and unjust means, our convictions about him. Quoting John Paul II’s message on the 2002 World Day of Peace, the Holy Father reiterates, “Those who kill by acts of terrorism actually despair of humanity, of life, of the future. In their view, everything is to be hated and destroyed” (John Paul II, Message on the 2002 Word Day of Peace, n. 6).

How do we deal as Christians with the threats of nihilism and fundamentalism? For a very good start, let’s look on Mary. Her pervasive openness to God through prayerful listening to his Word is the bane of nihilism. Her loving attention to Elizabeth and the newly married couple at Cana who ran out of wine teaches us that service in love is the best expression of true religion, not violent imposition of our religious views. If we as individuals and as communities truly follow in her steps we would be able to experience peace which St. Augustine calls “tranquillitas ordinis” (the ‘tranquility of order’), explained by Pope Benedict XVI the Holy Father as “a situation which ultimately enables the truth about man to be fully respected and realized” (Message for ’06 World Day of Peace, n. 4). What is the truth about man? That we are God’s children, brothers and sisters to one another and to all other human beings. Therein lies the key to peace.

Henry Ford was once asked the secret of his successful marriage on its 50th anniversary. He answered: “I use the same formula that you see with my cars: I stick to one model.” We can also be successful men and women of peace by sticking to one human model: the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Mother of Peace.