SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD Celebrated 1st January 2023

NEW YEARS DAY; for some of us, this is a good time to think on the past year and friends and family no longer with us; to consider also the possibility of making a significant new start in our lives, both as individuals and as members of our civil and church communities. With so many family disasters, broken relationships and the many twists of the past year, many will be happy to reflect on possible New Year’s resolutions, to bring a new quality and new values into the year just beginning. New Years are deeply felt by most people as a time for asking God’s blessing on the year ahead; a still unforeseen future holding a mixture of both hope and fear.

The first reading offers us the assurance that the God we love and worship is One who goes with us on our journey, who is gracious and familiar to us. And the Gospel tells of the welcome God gives us, sending us His Son, born from a human mother, and bearing the name “Jesus” which offers the ultimate solution for our human condition.

The Church proposes another important idea to be celebrated on this significant start-day of the year. In the feast of we say thanks for the wonderfully human way that God came close to us, through the Motherhood of Mary, the young girl from Nazareth. We recall the real Jewishness of Jesus, whose parents brought him to the Temple to fulfil the Law of circumcision.

By mothering him, Mary not only gave Jesus a body, she also fundamentally shaped his personality and moulded his early identity. Part of her shaping of Jesus’ identity was in the religious upbringing she gave him, teaching him the basics of prayer and love towards God, and handing on the core of Jewish belief in the reliably faithful God, whose faithfulness was shown through the story of his people.

The spirituality of the Magnificat would have been taught to Jesus by his mother. Mary’s Magnificat, a tapestry and a song and a most profound journey. An exultation of mercy, celebrating reversals that is most radically the disciple’s justice-seeking

pilgrimage. This Canticle is a Biblical theology-in-motion. It conveys the whole majestic sweep of "Judeo-Christian faith" from Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, through Mary’s graced events, until the end of time.

The Magnificat is a revolutionary document of passionate conflict and vindication, calling all believers to a journey of solidarity with all oppressed peoples. Mary’s Song is the great new Canticle of Liberation, praising a God who has promised "community" with those who suffer from personal and systemic injustice, and more importantly has been "faith-full" to those sustaining promises.

Mary’s vocation is our vocation. Mary teaches us courage and solidarity in all liberating strife. Mary lifts up the small horizon of our sighted vision to the abundant insight of here boundary breaking Son. The Canticle of Mary is the song both of the Mother of God and of the Church; the song of the Daughter of Zion and of the new People of God; the song of thanksgiving for the fullness of graces poured out on God’s family and the song of the "poor" whose hope is met by the fulfilment of the promises made to our ancestors, "to Abraham and to his posterity for ever" (#2619).

From his home life with Mary and Joseph, Jesus first came to know the meaning of faithful love in its human practicality. The second reading points to the cosmic dimension of Mary’s role, that her total ‘Yes’ to God, the Saviour was “Born of a woman, born under the law; ” and so the divine Son took a human face and received a human name.

It is a day for joining in her deep pondering on the Word of God. It has been suggested that our loyalty to our faith is founded on the Church’s images, metaphors and stories. The Magnificat The Prayer Of Mary

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his

arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever. (Lk 1:46-55)

And the most powerful image of all is Mary, the Mother of God. It all begins when a mother brings her little child to see the Christmas crib. The child gazes in wonder at this exotic scene of angels, animals, shepherds, kings, mother and father, all gathered around a little baby in its cot. “Who is the baby?” the little child asks.… “That is Jesus. ” ... “And who is Jesus?’ “Jesus is God. ” .... “Oh. ” the little child says. “And who is the lady?’ “That is Mary, God’s mom. ” It’s a hard story to beat. It is many children’s first introduction to theology and a most effective one at that.

Nothing in later life shakes their attachment. They may disagree and sometimes violently with the Church’s pronouncements on certain issues. They may fall foul of its discipline in areas as intimate as marriage and family life. They may be disillusioned by the leadership of pope and bishops, or by the lifestyle of their clergy but they remain a child Jesus who is GOD WITH US.

The most powerful object of attachment is the metaphor of Mary, the Mother of God. Research on young Catholics shows that the Mary image continues to be their most powerful religious image. For some older people, very often men, whose attachment to religion was tenuous, to say the least. Yet they carried in their pockets a rosary beads and stopped occasionally to pray before a statue of Our Lady.

There’s a story heard from nuns who taught grade-school. One day God made a tour of heaven to check out the recent arrivals. He was taken aback at the quality of many of those allowed in and he went out to confront Peter about it. “You’ve let me down

again” he told Peter. “What’s wrong now?” Peter asked.

“You let a lot of people in that shouldn’t be there. ” “I didn’t let them in. ” “Then, who did?’ “Well, I turned

them away at the front gate, but they went round the back and your mother let them in. ”

It is the sort of story that may make intellectuals and academics squirm or nonCatholics sneer. But it strikes a chord in our Catholic sensibility. It tallies well with our conception of mother and the gospel image of Mary. She is the Mother of God; the mother of the Church and our mother too and like any mother, she will not be resisted by bureaucratic red-tape or hair-splitting moralists, when it comes to the happiness of her children.

I would suggest that this is also a good day to reflect on a mothers’ love for her son, Jesus. Her love was neither selfish or demanding. Jesus had his own vocation to fulfil and Mary must and does stand aside to give freedom to the love between Mother and Son. This leads to Jesus’ deep reverence and respect for people and especially those on the outskirts of society, the broken, the poor and the despised that we see so clearly reflected in the Gospel stories.

The Motherhood of Mary and her great song of the Magnificat gives us a blueprint for our own reflection at the start of this New Year