On January 1, I watched (on TV) crazy, nutty people take the Polar Bear Plunge and throw their half-naked bodies out of the 16 below zero air temperature into icy cold waters through a hole that had been chiseled into frozen Lake Minnetonka.
Now, as a nurse, there is no way you could convince me that throwing my body, or my heart for that matter, into a fight-or-flight response would be fun: as a person whose baseline body temperature indicates she should be living in Southern California, nothing could be further from my bucket list!
So it’s no wonder that as I was making the New Year’s dinner that night, I had a the sense something was bothering me, I just I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. The second my hands hit the ice cold water I was rinsing the green beans under, I remembered! It was those crazy people risking life and limb for an adrenaline rush and a little bragging rights.
It always amazes me how I can read, hear or see something and hours later still feel it tugging at my attention. This happened on Christmas Eve. Something Catholic author and Bible teacher Sarah Christmyer wrote in our Advent Reflections on Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium) stayed with me all morning.
As I sat waiting for Mass to begin at 5:00 p.m. her words filled my thoughts again. Sarah summarized the final paragraphs of Evangelii Gaudium, the paragraphs that focused on Mary as the Star of the New Evangelization, like this:
Mary is her son’s gift to his people, Pope Francis says; then he picks up the title used by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI before him: she is the “Star of the New Evangelization.”
When I first read that, the ex-Protestant in me cringed. Don’t make her the star, I wanted to say – Jesus is the star! But her “star power” is not that of, say, Jenifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie. Mary is like the North Star, Polaris, the Guiding Star. Brightest among the stars in Ursa Minor and easy to find, it is the still point in the wheeling Northern sky. But you don’t find Polaris for its own sake, you find it so you know where North is.
“But you don’t find Polaris for its own sake, you find it so you know where North is.” Those were the words that set my heart “a pondering”. The brightest star isn’t created for us to bask in its beauty; it is created to point us in a direction.
Then it hit me! A star, though majestic and beautiful in its own radiant light, should always point to something greater. That was exactly the role of the Star of Bethlehem. That is exactly the role of Mary, the Star of the New Evangelization. Both lead to the Perfect Light, the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, and that’s exactly what we should do. We should be stars that guide others to Christ.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is by the author of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle:
“We draw people to Christ by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
The question then follows, how do we do this? How can we be such a light to others?
There are two Christmas songs that I have known since I was a child, but it wasn’t until a new mixed version of the songs came out in September of 2010 that they climbed to the top of “My Favorite Christmas Songs” list. The song combines God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and We Three Kings and the chorus is something to be pondered, not only in light of “three wise guys,” but in light of the Blessed Mother and in light of our call to be the light of Christ to the world, to share the Gospel with joy!
After reading Sarah Christmyer’s post, I decided to reflect on the words of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings in light of three things: the star of Bethlehem, the Star of the New Evangelization, and the star we are commissioned to be. When looking at the chorus, the meaning pertaining to the star of Bethlehem is the most obvious, and one can easily see how the lyrics fit the Blessed Mother as well, but it got me thinking, “What do these lyrics mean in light of me leading others to Christ?”