Most Reverend José H. Gomez Archbishop of Los Angeles
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels January 1, 2022
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
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So as we start the New Year, we ask special blessings for all of you and your families during this new year.
So I hope you have been enjoying this Christmas season with your families and loved ones. And today as we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, we entrust ourselves and our families, and all our brothers and sisters here and around the world, to the protection of Mary, who is also our mother.
As I was saying, today the universal Church celebrates the World Day of Peace, so we need pray in a special way for peace in the world, peace in our families, in our society — especially during this difficult time of the pandemic.
Let us also continue to pray for the end of the pandemic and for the effort that we all are trying to be active on protecting one another.
So, Christmas is the season of wonder! We celebrate in this holy season, the wonder of God’s love entering into our world, the wonder of his love entering into our lives, and into our hearts.
And it is beautiful that every new year begins during new year, during this Christmas season. We are, in fact today, in the Octave of Christmas.
For the Church — for all of us — the new year begins with this sense of wonder, this amazement that we have for God’s tender love and kindness towards us.
This is why the first reading of today’s Mass from sacred Scripture is a beautiful prayer of blessing. It is a prayer, if we think about it, that God himself taught to Moses, thousands of years ago.
So let us listen again to the words of that prayer, from today’s first reading:
“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!”
My brothers and sisters, this is what we are looking for, every one of us. This is true for all of us. We all long to know the presence of God, to know that we are secure in his arms, embraced by his love. We all long to see him, face to face.
So this is the blessing that God wants to bestow on you and me, and on every one — to see him face to face, to live forever in friendship with him, and to experience the love that never ends.
And that is why God comes to us on Christmas. This is what Christmas means.
In our Gospel reading today, we have the beautiful scene from the first Christmas night:
“The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.”
This Child that the shepherds find in the manger — he is the Love of God, come down from heaven in human flesh. In the face of this Child, we see the human face of God, no longer hidden but revealed.
This is the meaning of his Incarnation. The Word of God takes on our human flesh to save us. The Son of God is born as the Son of Mary in order to show us the way back home to him.
And then, St. Paul in the second reading of today’s Mass declares this beautiful. He says:
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
And this is especially why we honor Mary, the Mother of God, on the first day of the year. Because in the face of Jesus, this Child born of Mary — the face of God shines upon us. In this Child, our God has come down from heaven, to look upon us with kindness and compassion; he has come to bring us peace.
The root of peace is Jesus Christ. The little Child of Bethlehem who is born on Christmas.
So my prayer for all of us, as we start this new year, is that we will awaken to a new awareness of God’s love and his presence in your lives. My prayer is that in this new year, you will enter into a deeper and closer friendship with Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel today, the shepherds talk about
“all they had heard and seen.” The Gospel also tells us that Our Blessed Mother Mary, “
kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
Jesus wants each one of us to do the same thing. He wants us to open up the pages of the Gospels to reflect on his words and deeds, to ponder the mysteries of his life.
So let us ask for the grace to become people who radiate the life of Jesus Christ in our lives! This year, let us resolve to fill our hearts and minds with the life of Jesus Christ!
And as we all know, my brothers and sisters, we can find him in the bread and in the Word — in the Eucharist and in the Gospels.
So as we begin this new year, let us ask Our Blessed Mother Mary to help us to keep all the things of Jesus — his words, his actions, the scenes from his life — and to ponder them in our hearts. Just as Mary did.
So I want to wish a blessed New Year to all of you and your families.
1.
Readings: Num. 6:22–27; Ps. 67:2–3, 5–6, 8; Gal. 4:4–7; Luke 2:16–21.