Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
New Year's Eve/Day, January 1, 2003 Luke 2:16-21	Listen to Audio

This is a day that has gone by all kinds of names.  Obviously it’s New Year’s Eve/Day.  The Catholic Church used to celebrate the “Feast of the Circumcision” on this day.  Now they call it the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.  (“Mother of God,” in Greek Theotokos, is the most ancient title of Mary, dating from the Council of Ephesus in 431.  The title was originally meant to emphasize the inseparable full divinity and full humanity of Jesus, that Mary was the mother of the whole Christ, not just the human part.  A further implication of her being the mother of the whole Christ is that she is mother of the Church, the body of Christ, as well – and our mother because we are members of his body.)  For several years in between it was simply the Octave Day of Christmas, which means the “eighth day.”  In many Protestant traditions, this day is celebrated as the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which I think is very appropriate because in the Jewish ceremony of circumcision, the name is given to him.

The name Jesus is not in common usage today, at least not among English-speaking people.  In fact, only in Spanish-speaking cultures do families regularly name a child “Jesus.”  We don’t find this practice in German, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, or any other culture with a Christian heritage.  For those of us who are non-Hispanic, there seems to be a certain taboo, undoubtedly out of reverence, against naming a child after our Savior.

And yet, that’s not quite true.  Children are commonly named Joshua, and, guess what, that’s the same name as Jesus.  If you were to have approached Jesus two thousand years ago, and called him “Jesus” as we pronounce it today, he would probably have said, “Huh?”  “Jesus” is a Greek and Latin form, with a highly distorted anglicized pronunciation, of the Hebrew name Joshua, or Yeshua.  And Yeshua was a fairly common name in the time of Jesus.  The name means, “God is our Savior,” and of course recalls the great Joshua of Old Testament, who led Israel into the Promised Land, thereby being the one who truly did complete the saving act of God that Moses had begun in the liberation from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and Covenant on Mount Sinai.  It is significant the Joshua was the military leader who overcame the enemies who would have prevented the people from settling in the land God gave them, and who even threatened to destroy them.  The name certainly signified what Jesus came to do, and for us, signifies what Jesus continues to do.

We stand at the beginning of a new year, looking forward to a year that, if we are honest about it, does not hold much more promise than the continuation of more of the same as last year – and maybe worse, maybe much worse.  This is not to be pessimistic, but to replace pessimism, not with empty and groundless optimism but with hope.  This hope is born from recognizing that the goodness and worth of the year does not depend on what does or does not happen, but on how we respond in grace to whatever is in store.

The question for us at New Year is not really what does the year hold in store for us, but how do we respond to it in grace.  How can we respond as individuals who are marked with the dying and resurrection of Christ?  How can we embrace the dying that comes to us in so many ways in view of the power of Christ’s resurrection?  How can we as a community live what we are not just called to be but also empowered to be?  Where this questions leads us is important because it is now through us as God’s people that his grace continues to come into the world.

And so whatever the circumstances of the world during this coming year might be, whatever the circumstances of the Church during this coming year might be, it is an opportunity for us to bring the saving grace of Christ into our world, into our communities.  What we need to do then is adopt the posture, first and foremost, that Mary had in this reading: “She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”  Maybe many of our troubles and our problems come from our failure to ponder, our neglect to find the kind of time in our sometimes furiously busy lives to consider the things that are truly important.  And so, perhaps our New Year’s resolution should be to have more time – to make more time, it doesn’t come automatically – to make more time to ponder, which is another word for prayer.

© 2003 Thomas Welbers