Mother of God and Our Mother ~ reflex for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
Blessings on your New Year!!!
During the Octave of Christmas, we also celebrate Mary, the Mother of God, because her openness, her YES, her humility and self-giving made Christmas possible. She opens herself fully to the will of God and He pours Himself out fully through her to us.
Today’s Gospel begins with the shepherds who “went in haste” to find Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in a manger for a crib. We hear how they “made known the message that had been told them about this child” and how they glorified and praised God for all they had heard and seen. God chose “nobodies” to be the first Christ-bearers after Mary, because nobody is nobody to God!
Right in the middle of these words about the shepherds and the amazement they stirred by sharing this Good News, there is a verse about Mary, who “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” This is part of the beauty of Mary: she knew wonder and awe, and she knew how to “be with” the events in which she was involved, to allow God to act and to simply ponder His action in the quiet of her heart.
Mary, Mother of God, is the foundation of the whole mystery of our redemption, from the Eternal Word’s conception in her womb by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit to our own conception in the womb of Mother Church “until Christ be fully formed in us” (Gal. 4:19). Mary cannot ever be anyone other than the Mother of God; everything before the arrival of Gabriel was preparing her for this role, and she cannot ever stop being Jesus’ Mother! She is present at the Incarnation, the Passion and Death, and the Ascension of Jesus, and we also see her interceding for the Church by praying (with the disciples) the first novena for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Because in her fiat at the beginning of God’s act of Redemption, she is both accepting God’s gift for herself, and making possible the act of faith of the whole Church yet to come. She is God’s Mother, and ours.
Mary, Mother of God, is our perfect example of complete receptivity to the Word and a ready YES to every breath, every movement of the Holy Spirit. Why? Love. These are the movements and assents of love. Love longs for encounter, relationship, and oneness. Love understands wonder and awe. Love never misses an opportunity to speak of the Beloved or to pour itself out for the “other.”
During this holy season, let’s continue to keep the warm sentiments of Christmas alive in our hearts and homes, so that, bright with the Love that comes to us in such humility, we might bring that light to every darkened place in our world.
May you and all those you love be blessed abundantly in 2023.
