Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
Lectionary: 18
Reading 1
The LORD said to Moses:
“Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them:
This is how you shall bless the Israelites.
Say to them:
The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon
you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and
give you peace!
So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites,
and I will bless them.”
Responsorial Psalm
R/ (2a) May God bless us in his mercy.
May God have pity on us and bless us;
may he let his face shine upon us.
So may your way be known upon earth;
among all nations, your salvation.
R/ May God bless us in his mercy.
May the nations be glad and exult
because you rule the peoples in equity;
the nations on the earth you guide.
R/ May God bless us in his mercy.
May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you!
May God bless us,
and may all the ends of the earth fear him!
R/ May God bless us in his mercy.
Reading 2
Brothers and sisters:
When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son,
born of a woman, born under the law,
to ransom those under the law,
so that we might receive adoption as sons.
As proof that you are sons,
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
crying out, “Abba, Father!”
So you are no longer a slave but a son,
and if a son then also an heir, through God.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets;
in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem
and found Mary and Joseph,
and the infant lying in the manger.
When they saw this,
they made known the message
that had been told them about this child.
All who heard it were amazed
by what had been told them by the shepherds.
And Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.
Then the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen,
just as it had been told to them.
When eight days were completed for his
circumcision,
he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel
before he was conceived in the womb.
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
A new year is upon us which gives us all an opportunity to look forward with hope on our mind, peace in our heart, joy in Christ, and the Love of God surrounding us. We are still in the Christmas Season and will be until The Baptism of the Lord which is held on Sunday January 09th. This gives us cause of celebration. We are able to sing and glorify the Birth of the Christ Child in a continuous litany and let the reality of that moment, the Word Becoming Flesh, saturate our faith-life and lift us above this earthly world into a wonderful awareness of our Creator and God. We are encouraged not to end the celebration too soon but instead to be continuous in our thoughts and actions which honor our Savior and God. Today marks the Eighth Day in the Octave of Christmas; a period of intense worship where each of the days in questions are recognized as Solemnities or High Feast Days. This last one is one reserved for giving honor and glory to Mary the Mother of God. It is considered a Holy Day of Obligation within the Roman Catholic Church because of the importance that it carries.
It is fitting that it is January 01st every year that this feast day is celebrated. Mary, as the Mother of God, gave birth to the Christ Child and brought Him into the world fully human and fully divine. This marked the beginning of many new things. It officially began the Christian Era, brought full revelation to God’s Eternal Plan, revealed the Holy Trinity in its entirety, and offered all of God’s Creation a clear path to salvation. This event shook the entire world and brought upon its rebirth. From that moment forward God’s Son could never be removed from what was God’s: the visible, the invisible, us, and all of creation. This all started with one woman filled with grace and who was ready to accept the responsibility that was placed upon her.
Through our interactions with Jesus and Mary we can celebrate our rebirth; focusing on our lives through our relationship both with Jesus and His Beloved Mother. We are taught that we are God’s Children. Part of living a life with Jesus Christ is recognizing this. As our spirituality grows and our relationship with Jesus Christ deepens there will invariably be a change that occurs within us. We will look at things a different way. We will feel different. We will act different. Things will become less difficult. This is part of the God-Experience as things of this world, built up by society; fade away in favor of the things from God. This all starts with Jesus Christ. Mary being the vessel from which Jesus entered this world is given importance in her role as Jesus’ mother and, by extension, our mother for we are taught that we all are God’s children; thus the Mother of the One becomes The Mother of All.
Just as the birth of Jesus Christ marked something new so we can mark our recommitment to our faith and to Jesus as something new. This is our rebirth guided by the prayers of Mary herself. Mary can be involved in our own renewal just as she was involved in the life of Jesus from when he was a little child until his death on the cross. She, being our mother, can be our greatest advocate by praying for us to her Son for our betterment and well-being. Her love for us is as powerful as the love she has for her son and she has been known to use this love to keep us safe and secure through our journey through this life and the next. There is something special about a mother’s love for her children; thus we are benefactors of that same love that pours forth from her, through her Son, to us. Mary speaks for her Son, acts at the bequest of her Son, and advocates for her Son. In the same way she advocates for us. The relationship between Jesus, Mary and us is two-fold: all are able to give and receive in the relationship. We cannot be afraid to recognize the opportunity of rebirth and to recognize what power these relationships contain.
Every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation we profess our faith through the Nicene Creed. In it are the words:
“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”
The invisible referred to here is that which lies beyond the physical world and dwells in the spiritual realm. So with this statement we as Christians emphasize that we believe in this spiritual realm and all that encompasses it. This includes all the angels, saints, and souls of the Faithful Departed. When we speak of these things or speak to these things (some would call it praying) we do so in a way that is referred to as dulia. When we speak to Mary the Mother of God it is known as hyperdulia. When we pray to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit it is known as Latria (a sacrificial reverence reserved for God alone). This is important to note because, us believing in the spiritual realm and spiritual creatures, it means that we also believe that there is no barrier between the material and spiritual which prevents us from talking to or hearing from that which we cannot see. Those within the spiritual realm, being of a higher state of awareness and knowing, are obviously closer to God having the unabated capability to offer their own prayers and supplications to God which can then enforce our own intentions. There is no obstacle between them and God like the ones we have erected through our perchance to sin and to be attracted to that which is evil. They can also intercede directly on our behalf. This is where our relationship with Mary comes in. In the Gospel of Luke the words of the Angel Gabriel and those of the Holy Spirit through Elizabeth raise Mary above all that is on heaven and on earth:
“And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you."
The Greek kecharitomene means favored by grace, graced. Its tense suggests a permanent state of being "highly favored," thus full of grace. Charity, the divine love within us, comes from the same root. God is infinite Goodness, infinite Love. Mary is perfect created goodness, filled to the limit of her finite being with grace or charity.)
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, "Most blessed are you among women..."
“For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed."
Among all women is a way to say the highest/greatest etc. of a group in Semitic languages (these words would likely have been spoken in Aramaic). Mary is being called the greatest of all women, greater than Ruth, greater than Sarah, greater than EVE! Since Eve was created immaculate (without original sin), Mary must have been conceived immaculate. And, although Eve fell into sin by her own free will, Mary must have corresponded to God's grace and remained sinless. She could not otherwise be greater than Eve. Thus, as the Fathers of the Church unanimously assert, Mary is the New Eve who restores womanhood to God's original intention and cooperates with the New Adam, her Son, for the Redemption of the world.
What this all means is that we all have the capability of fostering relationships with the heavenly powers which can only benefit us. It is through the recognition of Mary the Mother of God that we can recognize us as being God’s Children which in turn means that Mary, the Queen of all Heaven, is our spiritual mother. It we are to experience any type of rebirth it is through the intercession of Mary who, in a mother’s loving way, can assist us on our path to Jesus and ultimately to the Father. Through our rebirth comes the rebirth of the world. We do not stand alone in our spiritual journey. There is so much more working for our salvation than that which is working against us. What we have working for us is definitely more powerful than that which opposes us. As we continue to celebrate this Christmas Season we should keep focused on the Christ Child, the Holy Family, and Mary the Mother of God. We are with them and they are always with us.
A New Year. A rebirth. The Birth of Our Savior. So much more to look forward to than dread. That which we dread cannot and never will be able to overcome that which we look forward to.
“I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel.”
“Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, robed with the sun, standing on the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant, and in labour, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth.”
“Then a second sign appeared in the sky: there was a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and each of the seven heads crowned with a coronet.”
“Its tail swept a third of the stars from the sky and hurled them to the ground, and the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was at the point of giving birth, so that it could eat the child as soon as it was born.”
“The woman was delivered of a boy, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne while the woman escaped into the desert, where God had prepared a place for her to be looked after for twelve hundred and sixty days.”
“ And now war broke out in heaven, when Michael with his angels attacked the dragon. The dragon fought back with his angels, but they were defeated and driven out of heaven.”
Deacon Tom
My sisters and brothers in the Lord,
Today we have three really short readings to help us focus on this great mystery of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother. Only when we understand, even feebly, Mary’s role as Mother of God, can we come to accept fully the reality that God has taken on our flesh and brought redemption.
This year, this Solemnity of Mary comes the very day after the Feast of the Holy Family. This can help us understand that, for most of her life, people probably looked at Mary as simply an ordinary mother, caring for her only child, a son. Only as we reflect on the full life of Mary do we come to understand the depth of her love and the depth of her faith in the Lord. It is Mary’s faith that allows the incarnation to happen, that allows the Word to become flesh.
The first reading, from the Book of Numbers, speak of the Lord’s blessing to the Israelites. It is because Mary was able to listen and reflect on Scripture that she was able to receive the invitation of God and say “yes” to God’s request of her.
The second reading is from the Letter to the Galatians and tells us clearly that Jesus is born of a woman and born under the law. The challenge is for each of us to become like Mary and to always say “yes” to whatever God asks of us. The challenge is for each of us to allow the Lord to be born in us by our obedience to His word. We can ask Mary’s intercession so that we can follow her example and always say “yes” to the Lord.
The Gospel is the account of Jesus receiving His name and of His circumcision. Both of these events are there to make clear to us that Jesus is truly human in every aspect of his life—but still divine. It is Mary’s role as Mother that allows Jesus to be fully human.
Mary is always present in the mystery of our salvation. As we begin a New Year, she is present again, reminding us to seek the Lord and to listen to His Word and to say “yes” to God. May this New Year draw us deeper into the mysteries.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
We celebrate today this solemnity in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Early Christians had to fight for this belief. Mary is mother of Jesus—but because Jesus is God, we can also call Mary the Mother of God.
The readings are about God’s blessings upon our world. We heard in the Book of Numbers of this great Aaronic blessing. When these people wished peace for others, it is not just an absence of war, but a fullness of life. This is what we are invited to wish for everyone in our world this day. We all want an absence of war. But to be honest, some people still want wars because it proves their strength against others. And many of us who wish for peace are not yet totally peaceful in our own hearts. We simply want a peace that will allow us to do what we want to do.
We are invited to live more profoundly than that and to begin the huge and challenging work of a deep inner spiritual life that will then allow us to be peaceful in all circumstances.
We can only do this when the Spirit of Jesus dwells in our hearts, as we hear in the second reading, from the letter to the Galatians. We are not slaves of this world nor slaves of anything or anyone. We are freed in Christ so that we can live freely in every aspect of our lives. We are heirs of divine live and invited to live that divine life. Once again, we must recognize those aspects of our lives that are truly against the divine life: we must want nothing except God! In that is complete freedom.
As we begin this new year, we can choose once again to seek God alone, to strive to make all our decisions so that we only choose God.
Mary shows us the example in the Gospel today by keeping all that had happened at the birth of Jesus quietly in her heart and pondering the words and the events. We too can ponder the words and events of our own lives that have somehow indicated to us the presence of God. On this first day of the new year, we are invited to choose once again to live in accordance with God’s word and to ponder all that leads us to God.
Mary is the model of the Church and the model of all who believe. When we choose to honor her, we do so because she is the Mother of our Savior, the Mother of God and a Mother to us who can show us in her own life how to life for God alone. Let us give thanks on this holy day and let us make the choices in our own lives that will allow God to be the only meaning of our life.
MONASTARY OF CHRIST IN THE DESERT
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