Mother of God
Num
6:22-27; Gal
4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
Dear
members of the Body of Christ, today it is January 1st. Another day
and another year has begun. I suppose with all the news in the media during the
past year on terrorist activities, wars here and there, natural disasters, many
must have thought that they would never see the arrival of this year. Well,
here it is and a happy Mary, the Mother of God's Feast to all of you my
brothers and sisters in Christ.
Do
you recall the story? Jesus was taking His morning walk through heaven. He met
there some nasty people who should be in the other place. Angrily He went to
the front gates to bawl Peter out. In his defence, the apostle said,
"Lord, when the unworthy come here, I chase them away and tell them to go
to hell. But then they go to the back door, knock softly, and your mother
sneaks them in." The Christ smiled and apologized to Peter. He promised to
go fishing with him soon. Then He whistled softly as He went off to have lunch
with Mozart and Bach.
Today's
special Feast affirms that we Catholics believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary
truly is the Mother of God. This Catholic Dogma finds its origin in a Bible
passage that is found in the Gospel of Luke. After the archangel Gabriel had
appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth.
Upon her arrival, Elizabeth said to Mary, "And why has this happened to
me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?" [Lk. 1:43] Through Elizabeth
who was full of the Holy Spirit, it was proclaimed that Mary was truly the
Mother of God.
When
Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, identified the fruit of the womb of the
Blessed Virgin Mary by the words, "the mother of my Lord," she was
referring to the Lord, the One God of the Old and New Testaments. This one
biblical passage is undeniable proof that Jesus is God incarnated, therefore
qualifying the Blessed Virgin Mary to the elevated honour and title of
"Mother of God."
The
second proof also can be traced from the same passage: (Lk 1:41) “When
Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb”. The child in the
womb of Elizabeth was John the Baptist. He jumped out of joy in the womb of his
mother. To understand this incident clearly we need to go back to Old Testament.
Read 2 Samuel 6: 1-5. It speaks about the Ark of the Covenant, which was
containing the tablets of Ten Commandments. Whenever it was taken in
procession, David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before
the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals. And
they used to dance and sing joyfully before the Ark of the Covenant, because
David and his men realised and felt the presence of God in it.
Similarly,
John the Baptist being in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, realised and felt
the presence of God (Jesus) in the womb of Mary. That was the reason why he
danced in the womb of his mother, confirming that the baby in the womb of Mary
is God, and the Mary is the Mother of God. This is again another undeniable
proof that Jesus is God incarnated, therefore qualifying the Blessed Virgin
Mary to the elevated honour and title of "Mother of God."
Let’s now
come back to the concept of New Year. The name "January" comes from
the Roman god Janus or Januarius, the god with two faces, each having its own
pair of eyes, one looking to the past and the other looking to the future. This
is indeed a time to look back at the year that has just ended and to look
forward to the New Year ahead of us. How did I spend this one year of my life
that has just passed? Did I use it to advance my goals and objectives in life?
Did I use it to enhance the purpose of my existence? Could I have done better
last year in the way I invested my time between the demands of work, family,
friends and society, and the demands of my spiritual life? What things did I
achieve last year and what did I fail to achieve? How can I consolidate the
achievements of last year while reversing the failures and losses in this New
Year? Through soul searching questions like these we find that a review of the
past year naturally leads to setting goals and resolutions for the New Year.
There are
people who tell you that there is no point making New Year resolutions. Do not
believe them. We must set goals and make resolutions as a necessary conclusion
to our review of the past year. And we do need to review our lives from year to
year because, as Socrates says, the unexamined life is not worth living.
Today's
newspapers are full of individual and collective New Year resolutions. Most of
those, however, are not resolutions at all but only wishes. What is the
difference between a resolution and a wish? A wish identifies a goal one wants
to reach; a resolution specifies the steps one will take to reach it. A wish
says this is where I want to be, a resolution says this is the road I will
take, and this is what I will do to get there. The wishful person says "I
want to pass my exams this year" and the resolved person says "I will
devote an extra hour to my studies everyday in order to pass my exams."
The wishful person says "I will have more peace and love in my family this
year" and the resolved person says "I will spend more time with my
family at table instead of rushing off to the TV, so that we get to know and
understand ourselves better." The wishful person says "I will live a
life of union with God this year" and the resolved person says "I
will set aside this time everyday to pray and hear God's word." The
difference between wishing and resolving is: are we prepared to do what it
takes to make our dreams come true, are we prepared to pay the price?
The
gospel today presents Mary to us as a model of that new life in Christ that all
of us wish for ourselves in the New Year. There we see that Mary was prepared
to do something to realize this goal. What did she do? We read that the
shepherds, when they went to adore the Child Jesus in the manger, told all that
the angels had said to them. "But Mary treasured all these words and
pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). Again after the boy Jesus was
found in the Temple, we are told that "His mother treasured all these
things in her heart" (Luke 2:51). Mary was a woman who valued the word
of God, who treasured it and made time to meditate and ponder it. It is true
that the holiness of Mary is attributed to the grace of God, but this should
not make us forget that she needed to make an effort in order to cooperate with
the grace of God. She pondered the word of God in order to discern what God was
saying to her at every stage in her life as the handmaid of God.
The two
examples above of Mary pondering the word of God, namely, after the visit of
the shepherds and after the finding in the temple, show that Mary found the
word of God both in divine revelation (the angels' words to the shepherds) and
in her own experiences (her encounter with her son in the temple). Similarly
God speaks to us today through divine revelation (e.g. the Bible, the teaching
and preaching of the Church) as well as through our personal experiences, if
only we made time to reflect on them as Mary did.
Whatever
the situation in which we find ourselves - a hardship, a disappointment, a
decision to make - God has a solution, an answer that is right for us. We tell God
about it in prayer but we also listen to what God has to tell us about it.
Prayer is a conversation with God but sometimes all we do is pick up the phone,
read out the list of our problems to God and drop the phone without listening
to hear what God has to say to us. Let us today resolve to listen more to the
voice of God, to treasure God's word and ponder it in our hearts. Then shall we
be able to realize our New Year resolution of a new life in union with God.
I
heard a preacher speak of a mother who goes each visiting day to spend time
with her daughter in a psychiatric hospital. The daughter has been estranged
from her for years. She refuses in the rudest way possible to meet with her
mother. Still the next visiting day finds the mother back again hoping to speak
with her child. The preacher wisely compared this mother to Mary who never
gives up on anyone of us no matter how wretched we are.
Fulton
Sheen said whenever there is a decline in purity or the sanctity of marriage,
there is a decline in devotion to Mary. When we find increasing number of
problems, struggle and stress, then there is a decline in devotion to Mary. He
says it falls on us to revive that devotion by reviving it in our lives. As we
joyfully and hopefully begin this New Year, let us entrust ourselves and our
families into the hands of Mary our Mother with deep trust and faith, and ask
her to intercede for us to her Son. Mary is not only the Mother of God; she has
been given to us as our Mother as well, so that we can hold her hand and
continue our journey in faith. We need Mary as our Mother to support us on our
journey through the New Year. We need her faith when we don’t see a way, her
hope when we run into a dead end and her love when others desert us. May Mary’s
memory never leave us, and may her image always inspire us..! Let us love her
and honour her all the times and ask her to lead us to her Son Jesus our
Messiah.
AMEN.
Fr.
A. Christopher, HGN
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