Why We Begin Every Year with Mary

 

(Mary, the Mother of God 2026: This homily was given on January 1, 2026 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21.) 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Mary the Mother of God 2026]

We begin this year—we begin EVERY year—with Mary, our Blessed Mother.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.  I think the Holy Spirit, working through the Church, has us honor our Lady every January 1 for a reason.  I think the Holy Spirit has us honor our Lady every New Year’s Day because Mary reminds us of certain truths—certain ideas—that should guide us throughout the year.

For example, Mary reminds us that our intention each and every day of each and every year should be to do the perfect and holy will of God.  “Be it done unto me according to your word” was not only Mary’s response to the Lord at the Annunciation; it was her response to the Lord at every single moment of her earthly life!  That’s why we honor her above all the other saints.

If we’re going to do God’s will faithfully in our lives, then we, like Mary, need to be seeking holiness more than anything else.  That’s something else our Lady reminds us of.  Of course, since none of us is perfect in this regard, we need to make a habit of going to confession on a regular basis.  We can’t grow in holiness if we’re not seeking forgiveness for our sins regularly—at least every couple of months or so.

Mary also reminds us of the importance of prayer—and of reflecting on our lives when we pray.  In today’s gospel, St. Luke tells us that our Blessed Mother “kept all these things and reflected on them in her heart.”  These “things” were the events surrounding our Lord’s birth.  Mary prayed about these events, asking the Father to help her understand his salvific plan and how she fit into it.

Mary also reminds us that suffering is a part of life—even if you’re the greatest of saints; even if you’re the holiest human person who ever lived on planet earth.  Mary, as we all know, was perfect—she was without sin—and yet, a “sword” of suffering pierced her soul during the passion and death of her Son, just as Simeon had predicted it would.  Her moral perfection did not mean she was exempt from trial.

So obviously we should not expect to have a pain-free life in 2026 or in any other year!  Mary certainly didn’t expect that for herself.  But we SHOULD expect God’s grace to help us deal with our pain and suffering, as his grace helped Mary deal with hers.  No doubt Mary sought that grace as she prayerfully reflected on the events of her life—especially the events surrounding our Lord’s birth and death. 

In her popular song, “Breath of Heaven,” Amy Grant puts some beautiful words on the lips of our Blessed Mother that make this point.  The words are the words of a prayer for strength and help: a prayer from Mary to the Holy Spirit:

Breath of heaven
Hold me together
Be forever near me
Breath of heaven
Breath of heaven
light in my darkness
Pour over me your holiness
For you are holy

These are just a few of the reasons why it is good—and why it is fitting—for us to begin every year with Mary.  She teaches us, by her words and example, how to approach the next 365 days.  She teaches us to make every effort to do the will of God.  She teaches us to seek holiness and to go to confession regularly.  She teaches us to pray daily, to reflect on the events of our lives, and to seek the Lord’s help confidently in the midst of our sufferings and trials.  Of course, ultimately the Church has us begin each year with Mary so that someday we will END with Mary—so that someday we will end our lives with her, in that Kingdom that Jesus Christ her Son died and rose from the dead to give to her and to give to all of us.

Avoidable and Unavoidable Stress

What happens when you combine AVOIDABLE STRESS with UNAVOIDABLE STRESS!

(Holy Family 2025 (A): This homily was given on December 28, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr Raymond Suriani.  Read Sirach 3:2-7, 12-14; Colossians 3:12-17; Matthew 2:13-23.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Holy Family 2025]

We’ve all got it in our lives and none of us likes it; but it’s there and so we have to deal with it!  I’m talking about STRESS!

It’s become such a problem in our fast-paced American society, that (believe it or not) a non-profit organization has actually been formed called, “The American Institute of Stress”!  Stressed-out people can access it online.

Now we can all take some consolation this morning in the fact that even the members of the Holy Family had to deal with stress in their lives.   Jesus, Mary and Joseph were not immune from the phenomenon, even though both Jesus and Mary were sinless!  And yet, there was one big difference between the stress they dealt with, and the kind we face: almost all of theirs was unavoidable.

You see, there are two kinds of stress that we human beings experience, especially in our families: there’s the kind that we can avoid, and there’s the kind that we cannot avoid—even if we’re very holy, even if we do all the right things.  Since there was only one sinner in the Holy Family—Joseph—most of their stress was of the unavoidable variety.  By contrast, our lives are a mixture of some stress that we could pretty easily avoid (if we simply thought and acted in a certain way), and other stress that we’d have to face even if we were perfect in all our thoughts and actions. 

What makes life unbearable, I think, is when a great deal of our stress—maybe even the majority of it—is of that first kind: the kind that we could avoid.  This is stress that we don’t need to have; this is stress that I would say God doesn’t want us to have.  Unavoidable stress is bad enough; the addition of this other type can be overwhelming—and it can sometimes push us over the edge.  Perhaps you’ve been there—at least once or twice.

So what are some of the unavoidable stresses of life?  Well here are 3 of them—3 that often manifest themselves in our families; and 3 that also were present in the Holy Family, whose feast we celebrate in the Church this weekend.

Number 1, there’s what I would call the stress caused by unforeseen circumstances.  This is the stress we experience when someone close to us gets sick and then dies suddenly; it’s the kind of stress a person has to deal with when they’re laid off from work unexpectedly; it’s the kind of stress parents feel when their son calls to tell them that he just got into his first car accident.

This was also the kind of stress that Joseph and Mary experienced in today’s gospel story when they found out that crazy King Herod was trying to murder their child!  After all, this was not something they had expected!  There was stress in their journey down to Egypt; there was stress during their time of exile—because they were forced to live as refugees in a foreign country; and there was stress in their journey back to Palestine after Herod had died.

Number 2, there’s the stress of living with other people—which is also unavoidable, unless you’re a hermit living all by yourself in the middle of the desert!  Let’s face it, people—even the best of people—don’t always do what we would like them to do; they don’t always say what we would like them to say.  And that quite naturally causes stress—even if there’s no sin involved.  A perfect example of this in the life of the Holy Family was the finding of Jesus in the Temple.  When she and Joseph finally tracked Jesus down after 3 days of frantic searching, Mary said to our Lord, “Son, why have you done this to us?  You see that your father and I have been searching for you in sorrow.”

Those are the words of a very holy woman under a tremendous amount of stress.  But notice, there was no sin involved; it was simply a case of stress caused by the ordinary circumstances of living in a family.

There’s also the stress that comes into our lives when we do the will of God.  This, too, is unavoidable—if we’re serious about living the way God wants us to live.  We see this in the lives of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the situations in Scripture that I just mentioned.  We see the ultimate stress of this kind in what our Lord and his Mother had to deal with in the events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday!

These are just a few of the many stresses of life that cannot be avoided.  We can’t escape them; they’re part of the fabric of daily living.

But others, thanks be to God, can be avoided and should be avoided!  A few of these also need to be mentioned today, because we’ve probably all experienced them at some point in our families.

The first avoidable stress is the kind that comes when God’s order in the family is violated.  When children reject their parents authority, for example, there is stress—lots of stress.  Guaranteed!  That type of stress, incidentally, was absent in the Holy Family, because, as we’re told in Luke 2, Jesus always obeyed his parents.

So young people, if you want your parents to be less stressed and in a better mood more often, obey them!  Honor God’s order in the family, as Sirach tells you to do in today’s first reading!  Do what mom and dad tell you to do when they tell you to do it!  And that message even applies to teenagers!  In fact, let me tell you teens a secret: When your parents know that you’re obedient and honest and trustworthy, they end up giving you more freedom!  And that’s what you want, isn’t it?  However, when all they get from you is disobedience, they clamp down—hard!  And then everybody in the house gets stressed!

Here’s another avoidable stress in family life: the stress that comes from not being responsible.  When young people, for example, don’t pick up their toys, and clean their rooms, and do their chores, and finish their schoolwork when they’re supposed to—it adds to everyone’s anxiety level in the home.  I remember having a conversation with a stressed out mother a number of years ago, and she said to me, “Fr. Ray, I just can’t deal with it all!  It’s overwhelming me.  I have to do everything: I have to get the kids up in the morning, and make their lunches, and go to work for 8 to 10 hours a day, and then clean the house, and do the shopping . . . (and on and on she went with her list—it was quite long).” 

Finally I said to her, “Wait a minute here.  You have two children—but they’re both teenagers!  You mean to tell me they can’t make their own lunches?  You mean to tell me that you have to get them up in the morning?  Whatever happened to their alarm clocks?  They need to take responsibility where they’re capable of taking responsibility!  That alone would take a lot of stress out of your life immediately!”

She agreed—and so did one of her children, who happened to be standing there at the time, noticeably concerned about his mother.

And finally, there’s this avoidable stress: the type that comes with unrepented sin!  When family members speak unkind words to one another, and don’t say they’re sorry; when they lie and violate one another’s trust; when they refuse to forgive—all of that creates what I would call “an atmosphere of stress”.  And we all know the truth of this, because we’ve all been there!  That’s why today’s second reading from Colossians 3 is so appropriate for the feast of the Holy Family, where the focus is on family life: “Put on,’ St. Paul says, ‘compassion, kindness . . . patience—bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”

This, of course, is the ideal.  The reality is always something less, which is precisely why repentance is so necessary!  Did I say that Confession is good for family life?  Did I say that Confession is a good remedy for stress in a family?  Well, I’m saying it now!  Imagine a family where each member honestly faces his or her faults, admits them, confesses them, is forgiven for them, and then makes a sincere effort to change his or her behavior for the better.

That family, I can assure you, will avoid a great deal of avoidable stress.  Common sense should tell you that.

Let me end today by paraphrasing a prayer that used to be the closing prayer of the Mass of the Holy Family.  The prayer reads as follows: “Eternal Father, we want to live as Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in peace with you and one another.  May this communion strengthen us to face the troubles of life.”

When you think about it, my brothers and sisters, that’s really an “anti-stress prayer”!  To live like Jesus, Mary and Joseph means to avoid the avoidable stresses of life—like they did.  And facing the troubles of life involves coping with the stresses that we cannot avoid.

So now I’ll paraphrase the prayer and make it the closing prayer of my homily.  I’ll say it for all of us, and for our families: “Eternal Father, we want to live as Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who avoided most of the avoidable stresses of this life, and thus lived in peace with you and with one other.  Help us to follow their example.  And may the Eucharist we receive at this Mass strengthen us so that we can face all the troubles of life—especially those difficult and stressful situations that we cannot escape, no matter how hard we try.  This we ask through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”  

 

St. Joseph: Adversity Revealed His True Character

(Fourth Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 21, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Advent 2025]

It’s been said that “Adversity reveals character.”

Adversity reveals character.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement.  When you’re in the midst of a trial—when you’re put into a very stressful situation where your patience and love are put to the test—your true character will often show through. 

The kind of person you really are will be revealed.

And that’s the way it was with St. Joseph.

Perhaps it’s hard for us to fully appreciate the difficulty this good man faced when he learned that Mary was pregnant.  After all, we know how everything worked out.  We know that this story would eventually have a happy ending.

But Joseph didn’t know that!  In fact, from his perspective, this story could have easily had a disastrous ending, especially for Mary—and for Mary’s Child!

The text says explicitly that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph when she became pregnant.  Now please understand, this did not mean that she and Joseph were engaged to each other in the modern sense of that term.  In ancient Israel, betrothal was actually the first stage of marriage.  It took place roughly a year before the couple consummated their relationship and lived together as husband and wife. 

But, according to Mosaic Law, during this 12-month interim period the couple was still legally married.  Hence, a betrothed woman who had relations with another man was guilty of the sin of adultery.  And the penalty for adultery was clearly stated in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 22.  There we read the following: “If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out to the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife.  Thus you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Obviously when he first learned that Mary was pregnant, Joseph did not know she had gotten that way through a supernatural event!  He couldn’t possibly have known that!  He presumed it had taken place by natural means.  He probably said to himself, “This is shocking.  I’ve always known Mary to be holy and righteous, but I guess even holy and righteous people can be tempted and fall into sin.”

The bottom line is that he initially thought his otherwise saintly wife had been unfaithful to him.

It was then—in the midst of this disappointment and stress and (probably) anger—that Joseph demonstrated the type of person he really was.  This terrible adversity—this apparent tragedy—helped to reveal his true character.

First of all, he showed that he was a man of deep moral conviction AND at the same time a man of deep human compassion.  He couldn’t ignore his wife’s apparent unfaithfulness; to him this was a sin that needed to be confronted, not “swept under the rug.”  In that, he demonstrated his moral conviction.  And yet, he still had a loving compassion for Mary.  Even when he suspected that she had been unfaithful, he wasn’t willing to “throw the book at her” (so to speak), by making the sin public.  If he had done that, our Blessed Mother (as I indicated a few minutes ago) would have been stoned to death. 

His compassion and conviction led him to make the decision to divorce Mary quietly.  Divorce was allowed under Mosaic Law at the time, and it was necessary here because they were already in the first stage of marriage.

We live in a world right now where many people think it’s either conviction OR compassion: either you have to be a cold-hearted legalist when it comes to the commandments of God and have no compassion for others, or you have to be a wishy-washy “nice guy” who has no solid moral convictions about important issues of the day.  (Many of our Catholic politicians have fallen into that latter category in recent years, have they not?)

Joseph shows us that this is a false dichotomy.  It’s a lie!  It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.  As Catholics we are not to be either people of conviction OR people of compassion, we are to be people of both conviction AND compassion—like Joseph was! People who are truly pro-life, for example, are strong in their conviction that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, but they also have great compassion for women in difficult pregnancies—and also for women who have had abortions.

Secondly, in the midst of this apparent crisis, Joseph demonstrated that he was very open-minded.  Now the interesting thing is, in today’s world he would be called the exact opposite.  In modern western culture, Joseph would definitely be labeled “narrow-minded.”

Why?

Because he was open-minded only when it came to the truth!  He was not “open-minded” when it came to error and sin!  When the angel revealed to him the truth about Mary and her pregnancy—that she had conceived this child through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the child was the divine Son of God who would save the world from sin—Joseph immediately accepted it.  He was open-minded to the truth of God’s word as spoken to him through this heavenly messenger. 

In today’s world, of course, “open-minded” is normally used to describe those who accept and promote gross moral evils—especially in the area of sexuality.  Those who embrace Biblical moral principles and accept the truth of God’s word as proclaimed by his Church are considered to be hopelessly narrow-minded.

Well, if that’s your perspective, if that’s where you stand—and I pray it is—then take heart: St. Joseph would be right there with you.

No doubt about it.

These are just two aspects of Joseph’s character that shine through brilliantly in this well-known scene from the Gospel of Matthew.  There are, of course, many others I could have mentioned.  In this story, for example, we also see that Joseph was a man of great courage, who was ready to do the right thing regardless of what other people might say.  We see that he was a man who walked by faith, not by his feelings.  We see that he was someone who believed that God could do great things—even “impossible” things.

And, amazingly, we see all these truths, we know all these things about St. Joseph and his character, without ever hearing him speak a single word.

Did you realize that? 

In the entire New Testament, not one single word of St. Joseph is recorded!

It must have been in reference to him that the old saying was first coined: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Joseph’s actions—especially in times of adversity—clearly revealed his character, and showed him to be a holy, faithful, obedient servant of God.

St. Joseph, pray for us, that we will be the same—especially in our moments of adversity.

 

Being Immaculate: An Experience for Mary, an Expectation for Us

 

(Immaculate Conception 2025: This homily was given on December 8, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Luke 1: 26-38.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Immaculate Conception 2025]

 

If you look up the word “immaculate” in the dictionary, you’ll find definitions like these:

1.    Having no stain or blemish.

2.    Pure.

3.    Undefiled.

4.    Having or containing no flaw or error.

5.    Spotlessly clean.

6.    Correct or perfect in every way.

For our Blessed Mother Mary, being immaculate was an experience; for you and for me, being immaculate is an expectation.

And that’s the difference between Mary and us in a nutshell.

Her “immaculateness” began to be experienced at the moment she was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Ann—which is the event we commemorate on this feast of the Immaculate Conception.  Remember, the Immaculate Conception does NOT refer to the virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary—which is what many people mistakenly believe.  The event that led to Jesus’ virginal conception is called “the Annunciation.”

The Immaculate Conception prepared Mary for the Annunciation and for everything that came afterward, but the Immaculate Conception itself refers to Mary’s conception in the womb of her mother.  Here’s how Pope Pius IX defined the dogma: “the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, was preserved free from every stain of original sin.”

But Mary’s immaculateness didn’t stop there.  It continued throughout her life and into eternity!  She said yes to God at every moment of her life and consequently never sinned.  She was, as the angel Gabriel said, “Full of grace.”  And so, all those definitions of “immaculate” that I listed a few minutes ago apply to her entire life, spiritually speaking: she had no stain or blemish (on her soul); she was pure, and undefiled, and without flaw, and spotless—and morally perfect!

Now this is something we can understand intellectually—that Mary was born without original sin and was free from sin throughout her entire life.  But that’s as far as we can go, because we don’t have an experience of “immaculateness” in our earthly lives that’s comparable to Mary’s. 

The closest we come to it is at the moment of our baptism, when original sin is taken away and we receive the gift of sanctifying grace into our soul.  But even then—even after we’re baptized—we still have to deal with concupiscence, which remains in us even after original sin is taken away.  Mary never had to deal with concupiscence because she never contracted original sin in the first place.

Concupiscence is the inclination to sin—the inclination to sin that we all experience every day.  It’s what St. John was alluding to when he wrote about “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”  It’s what St. Paul was getting at when he spoke of “the flesh” rebelling against “the spirit”.

Concupiscence is what gets us into trouble.  Concupiscence is what makes it so easy for us to lie, and cheat. and steal, and swear and hold grudges—and make excuses for our sins.

This is why I said at the beginning of my homily that for our Blessed Mother Mary being immaculate was an experience (it was a spiritual condition she lived in), but for us it’s something different.  For us, being immaculate is an expectation (that is to say, it’s something we look forward to in faith!).

We won’t be immaculate in the sense that Mary was immaculate until we get to heaven and are finally purified of every sin and of every sinful desire.  In a sense, that’s the bad news.  But the good news is we can grow closer to that goal right now in this life, if we make our relationship with Jesus our top priority and repent of our sins often (yet another reason to go to confession on a regular basis).

The “collect”—the opening prayer—of today’s Mass said it perfectly.  It made reference both to Mary’s experience of being immaculate and our expectation of being made so.  We heard these words a few moments ago:

O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant [that] … through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence.

So today let our simple prayer be, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, that our expectation of becoming immaculate like you will someday be fulfilled.  Amen.”