January 1 — World Day of Peace

“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” — Luke 2:19

The Church begins the civil year not with fireworks or resolutions, but with a woman holding a Child.

That alone tells us everything.

We don’t start the year with power, ambition, or achievement.
We start with reception.
With silence.
With trust.

Mary does not speak in today’s Gospel. She does not act. She does not explain. She keeps and ponders. The Word has already been spoken into her life, and now she lives with it — day after day, without knowing how it will unfold.

That is the posture of faith.

As the world rushes toward midnight — counting down, reflecting, resolving — the Church pauses to honor a man who did none of those things loudly.

Saint Sylvester I stands at one of the greatest turning points in Christian history, yet history remembers him not for thunder, but for steadiness.

He was not a martyr.
He did not found an order.
He did not write a great theological treatise.

And yet, the Church places him at the very edge of the year.

That is not an accident.

St. Thomas Becket has always struck me as a strange kind of saint — not because he was wild or extreme, but because his conversion was quiet, rational, and costly in ways most people don’t expect.

He wasn’t raised in a monastery.
He wasn’t a mystic chasing visions.
He wasn’t even particularly religious at first.

He was educated. Capable. Successful.
A man who understood how the world worked.

And that’s what makes him relatable.

Saint John of Damascus stands at a decisive crossroads in the life of the Church: a time when images were under attack, tradition was questioned, and clarity was desperately needed. He did not respond with noise or outrage. He responded with reason, faith, and courage—a rare combination that still instructs us today.

Living under Muslim rule in the 8th century, John was not protected by imperial favor or ecclesial power. In fact, his defense of sacred images during the Iconoclast Controversy placed him at great personal risk. Yet from his monastery at Mar Saba, he articulated one of the Church’s most important theological truths:

Because the Word became flesh, matter can now mediate grace.

This is the heart of John’s witness. He did not argue that images replace God—but that they proclaim the Incarnation. If God truly entered history, took on a human face, walked the earth, then portraying Him is not idolatry—it is confession.