World Peace Day and Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

The first of January is World Peace Day and the Catholic church also celebrates the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. So, it is not so much a New Year’s celebration but rather a call to remind us about world peace, how we can play a part in it and why we have this awesome title for Mary, calling her the Mother of God.

The homily by Father Fabian is indeed the kind where I would tell him “I need a pelampung (float) to keep me from drowning.” It means it is a very deep, thoughtful and complicated homily. So, I took out my notebook and was jotting down in a frenzy. I think people can see how my hands were flying off with the notes like I am a reporter or something.

But I do not care because I want to know why we call Mary, the Mother of God. This title has caused other faiths to feel ‘something wrong’ with us because it is indeed a very ‘BIG’ title for a human person.

The mystery of God becoming Man through Jesus, born of Mary may have confused a lot of people. It is a touch of divinity that some of us can see the picture while some of us are not able to. God, as Man, living through Jesus with its human limitations has brought us peace. Through the eucharist, God become human and each of us have entered into the sibling relationship with Jesus so that we can receive the divinity as well.

We have to see beyond the bread and wine and take the bread and wine as ourselves, sealing the gift from God. Hence, with gratitude, Mary was bestowed the title, Mother of God.

(note that I am only repeating what I wrote and I may not be thoroughly convinced with what I have written. If you have an issue with what I said, and if you take my interpretation of my God and feel confused or offended, it is not my problem, ok? You have the option not to read, ok?)

So, Father Fabian threw us this challenging question – Do we dare to ponder this mystery and accept them as Mary did? Do we dare to allow God to shines through us and in turn we shine upon others, especially the poor? What is our response to this marvelous process?

Then, the homily touched on the message from Pope Benedict on World Peace Day. I shall skip this part because it was a global issues and I was utterly lost in the explanation on United Nation, China, India, their preference for boys and baby girls aborted etc etc etc. Phew…

The Pope described all that as irrational. The Pope said we must put the poor first and give them a voice and a room.

Then, things get interesting. Father Fabian said in Malaysia, the church has become complacent. The laities, the church leaders and we have lost focus. Some of us are wrongly motivated to help the poor. Some treat it as a showpiece. Some do it to add a name to themselves. Some did it out of obligation.

Because we have been touched by the Divine, we cannot continue to be complacent. This certainly upsets our comfortable ritual of worshipping God. In a gist, if we take the combination of God + me = Catholicism, we are doing it wrongly.

To fight poverty is to build peace. Therefore, we have a choice to get out of our pew and do something or we are not moving forward.

Wow, I hope what I had written makes sense to me.

Happy New Year, anyway.