Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God
Cycle A
January 1,
2014 7:30pm and 8:30am
Saint Margaret Parish, Bel Air
Midnight in Paris
Back in 2011, there was a movie
called Midnight in Paris.
In the movie, a Hollywood
screenwriter named Gil is in Paris. He makes
a good living writing movie scripts, but he dreams of writing a novel.
Gil looks back to the 1920s and
30s as the golden age of novelists and he idolizes F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Ernest Hemingway. Well, one evening in
Paris, Gil is dreaming of those early decades of the twentieth century.
Unexpectedly a car pulls up and the
driver invites him to a party. He goes
along and surprisingly, at the party he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway.
Gil is simply ecstatic, but
Fitzgerald and Hemingway cannot understand why.
They have no idea that they are such legends.
Then, one of Fitzgerald’s and
Hemingway’s friends tells Gil that she is dreaming of the great age of French
art – the nineteenth century. She is as
dissatisfied with her life in the 1920s as Gil is with his life in 2011.
And then, the same mysterious
vehicle that transported Gil to the 1920s now transports this woman and him to
the nineteenth century. They meet the
famous artists Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas.
But these artists are also
dissatisfied and they are looking back to the Renaissance as the golden age of
art. Well, eventually Gil comes out of
his dream world and wakes up to a whole new understanding.
He realizes that our love for
things past should enliven the present, but should not displace it or distract
us from it. Gil resolves to make his own
life a golden age, here and now.
The Present
This scene from Midnight in Paris has a good lesson for
us at New Year’s.
We believe that all time – every
era, every century, every lifetime – we believe that all time is a gift from
God. God gives us his grace to make
something good with the time we have in our lives.
So unlike Gil in the movie, we are
not to get so stuck in the past that we miss the present. And equally, we are not to get so preoccupied
with the future that we ignore the present.
Instead, we are to live present
moment and lifetime as a gift from God.
We are to use as best we can the opportunities and gifts God gives us
and make something beautiful of our time.
Mary and the Present
This, I
believe, is the example of Mary whom we honor today.
Mary is
steeped in the past with all that God has done and communicated. She, I have to imagine, is also looking ahead
to her future with the expectations that any young woman would have.
But
Mary’s strength is that she is present to the present moment – to the persons
and tasks and opportunities that God has given her. And because of this, Mary is able to bring
God’s Son into the world.
Mary,
by her example, calls us to make our peace with the present and be alert to
what God wants us to do in the here and now of our lives. Yes, we can look back to the past and we can
look ahead to the future.
But we
are to live in the present and give ourselves fully to the persons and tasks
and opportunities that are before us. If
we do this, we will find the kind of fulfillment in life that Mary finds.
And in
our own way, we too will bring God more fully into this world. That is, I believe a healthy and holy
perspective for our lives and for this New Year’s Day.
