Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:1-2, 4-5, 6-7; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
Happy New Year, sisters and brothers, and a Happy Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God!
For as long as I can remember, I have treasured the blessing God gives to the children of Israel through Moses and Aaron in the Book of Numbers. When I was a deacon and for my first year as a priest, I served at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish in Rochester, New York. Just inside the front door of our rectory at St. Kateri was this prayer. So, it seems appropriate that I offer us, my sisters and brothers of St. Joseph’s College, the same blessing: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ, we are still in the season of Christmas. Today is what we call in the Church the Octave Day of Christmas, the eighth day of Christmas, including Christmas Day itself. And the Octave of Christmas, New Year’s Day, is always celebrated in our Church as the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
The Gospel reading we have heard today from Luke is the continuation of the Gospel reading many of us would have heard if we were at Mass on Christmas Eve. At Christmas Mass at Night, we hear of shepherds who receive a message from “an angel of the Lord” that the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, “has been born to us this day in the city of David,” Bethlehem. And the shepherds are to find this newborn Saviour, of all places, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Today those shepherds have arrived at the place where Jesus was born, in a manger in Bethlehem. Luke’s Gospel says that the shepherds “went with haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” And the shepherds seem to have left in just as much haste as they arrived.
The shepherds who visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph while Jesus was a newborn in the manger in Bethlehem also seem not to be the type to keep secrets too well (although who could blame them, really; they were the first people on Earth, besides Mary and Joseph, to meet God in the flesh). When the shepherds leave, Luke says, they tell everybody around them “what had been told them about this child.”
The shepherds’ news to the world was news worth proclaiming, that is for sure. It was amazing news, in fact: God, the Saviour of the world, born as a human infant in a manger in Bethlehem, City of David. Luke’s Gospel tells us that “all who heard [this] were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”
But Luke’s Gospel, characteristically so detailed about the events of Jesus’ life, so quickly passes over these amazing events of Jesus’ birth: “The child lying in the manger” tended to by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds arriving and then leaving the manger scene just as quickly, telling everybody they could find about the amazing events they had witnessed, and then returning to their fields, their livelihoods, but “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”
These first eight days of Christmas have passed by so quickly, have they not? And that is even if we have found time to glorify and praise God for all we “have heard and seen,” all the times and all the people in whom we have encountered the human face of God in a special way. We are doing just that right now, sisters and brothers, the worship of the shepherds, glorifying and praising God for all we “have heard and seen.”
Yet it all happens so quickly. And, on this Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, we hardly hear anything about Mary. Rightly, especially because we are still very much in this Christmas season, our New Testament readings today, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and Luke’s Gospel, all focus on Jesus. We are still celebrating Jesus’ birth. So why, when we are still so focused on celebrating the Nativity of Jesus, do we insert today’s celebration of Mary as Mother of God into this Christmas season?
The doctrinal and historical reasons for celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on this eighth day of Christmas are many and complicated. The Council of Ephesus in 431 gave Mary the official title of Mother of God, to distinguish from Mother of Christ, a popular title given to Mary at the time. This is to say that Mary is not only the mother of the human Jesus Christ, as if Jesus could not be God and human at the same time after his birth. So to give Mary the name Mother of God is, indirectly, an affirmation that Jesus the Christ, human from his conception in Mary’s womb, is also God.
Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, says that “clearly from the earliest times [of the Church] the Blessed Virgin is honoured under the title of Mother of God.” This is true, yet only since the mid-1700s has a day been set aside specifically to honour the motherhood of Mary, in a way that is not overshadowed by other important events in her life, like the Annunciation or her Assumption, body and soul, into heaven. And only since 1969, under Pope Paul VI (talk about recent!), has the feast day dedicated to the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary been returned to January 1. Some countries, like Portugal, had celebrated the Maternity of Mary in October.
I like to think of this January 1, Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, as the Church’s Mothers’ Day of sorts. This celebration proposes for us Mary as the ultimate of mothers, the one chosen by God to bear his Son in human flesh into the world. And, for the same reason as I pray this on Mothers’ Day on the second Sunday in May, I pray (and I invite us to pray with me) for all mothers, still living on earth and those in heaven. I invite us to pray for all future mothers, would-be mothers who have had difficulty conceiving, mothers who are raising children in poverty and other difficult circumstances, and mothers whose children have died. Mothers of our Church, my sisters in Christ: I dedicate you to Mary, Mother of God and I ask Mary to bless you with joy, peace, and strength in your vocation as mothers.
I have been reflecting on how little Mary is featured in our readings today, how our New Testament readings focus mostly on Jesus. This is appropriate, especially since we are in the midst of the Christmas season. But Luke’s Gospel today includes one short mention of Mary, one I think is very important, particularly on this Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Luke says that, as the shepherds arrived and then left the manger scene, and then told the world about Jesus’ birth to everybody’s amazement, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
Mary, ever the humble mother, our Mother and the model and Mother of the Church, gives us the ideal example of silently treasuring and pondering before her newborn Son, the Saviour of the world. I imagine the shepherds and everybody who visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph during those days in Bethlehem, returning home more at peace than when they arrived at the manger scene. They returned home treasuring and pondering as Mary did, “glorifying and praising God.”
Sisters and brothers we, too, through this celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, ask the Lord for the grace to treasure and ponder, to glorify and praise God by our words, our actions, our worship. May we be the living blessing to the world and everybody we meet—the blessing Jesus communicated to humble shepherds through his mother Mary, and that God gave the people of Israel through Moses and Aaron in the Book of Numbers: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
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