It's New Year's Day, a day to reboot our lives and make resolutions, a day to look back at 2015 and forward to 2016. It's not a new year for the Church. We celebrate on this day, January 1, Mary the Mother of God. Our liturgical and ecclesial new year began several weeks ago, with the First Sunday of Advent. January 1 is also observed as World Day of Peace.
It's probably with the desire for peace that the Church's Solemn Feast interacts most clearly with our culture's celebration of a new calendar year. We turn over a calendar page with recognition of the desperate need for peace in the world. We invoke the mother of the Prince of Peace as we seek a world of peace and reconciliation.
As we start 2016, let us ask Mary to accompany us on our journey this year. Pope Francis says of the Mother of God, "She goes before us and continually strengthens us in faith, in our vocation and in our mission. By her example of humility and openness to God's will she helps us to transmit our faith in a joyful proclamation of the Gospel to all, without reservation. In this way our mission will be fruitful, because it is modeled on the motherhood of Mary."
It's natural as we turn the calendar that we look back and look forward. If you are like me, you get tired of those endless lists of the top news items, films, books and celebrity deaths. However, it is a natural inclination to compose "best of" lists. Any list I compose would include things such as Laudato Si, the wrap up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Canada, the election of a new government and prime minister, the scary accumulation of violence and terrorism around the world and our increasing awareness of the situation of tens of millions of refugees.
My image of the year is the haunting photo of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian child washed up on a beach. What is on your list? Is there an image that speaks to you?
I suggest that we follow the lead of our new Prime Minister and approach our attitudes and responsibilities with sunny ways. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is borrowing a phrase from Sir Wilfred Laurier. Trudeau's use of the phrase was offered in his address on election night. He was referring to positive politics. We have seen since he assumed office that he means much more by sunny ways. His ways of proceeding are causing a number of commentators to speak of the fact that "Canada is back." Those ways of the Prime Minister are not naive.
That sunny disposition deals with some pretty significant issues: climate change and the Paris dialogue, moves toward an enquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women, welcoming Syrian refugees, openness to serious dialogue with indigenous peoples, the firm resolve to not drop bombs on Syria (despite pressure from leaders at home and abroad). I would suggest that sunny ways are not that radically different from what Pope Francis is getting at with his positive ways – his emphasis on mercy, compassion, and inclusion. It's interesting that both Pope Francis and Justin Trudeau have stuck to their basic message from the moment of their elections. They are not scared by their objectors or by threats.
A good way to head into the New Year, most of which falls within the Jubilee of Mercy, is with the attitude of compassion – compassion for oneself, one's family, strangers, opponents, refugees, sinners, the homeless, the poor, the marginalized. We can call that sunny ways or, from the perspective of our Christian faith, mercy and compassion. It’s a new year and an invitation to new ways of being!