Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary

Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God

Prayers this week: The shepherds hastened to Bethlehem, where they found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. (Luke 2:16)

Father, help us to live as the holy family, untied in respect and love. Bring us to the joy and peace of your eternal home. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(January 1)   Mary, Mother of God
        Mary’s divine motherhood broadens the Christmas spotlight. Mary has an important role to play in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

She consents to God’s invitation conveyed by the angel (Luke 1:26-38). Elizabeth proclaims: “Most blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43, emphasis added). Mary’s role as mother of God places her in a unique position in God’s redemptive plan. Without naming Mary, Paul asserts that “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Paul’s further statement that “God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out ‘Abba, Father!’“ helps us realize that Mary is mother to all the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Some theologians also insist that Mary’s motherhood of Jesus is an important element in God’s creative plan. God’s “first” thought in creating was Jesus. Jesus, the incarnate Word, is the one who could give God perfect love and worship on behalf of all creation. As Jesus was “first” in God’s mind, Mary was “second” insofar as she was chosen from all eternity to be his mother. The precise title “Mother of God” goes back at least to the third or fourth century. In the Greek form Theotokos (God-bearer), it became the touchstone of the Church’s teaching about the Incarnation. The Council of Ephesus in 431 insisted that the holy Fathers were right in calling the holy virgin Theotokos. At the end of this particular session, crowds of people marched through the street shouting: “Praised be the Theotokos!” The tradition reaches to our own day. In its chapter on Mary’s role in the Church, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church calls Mary “Mother of God” 12 times. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture readings:  Numbers 6: 22-27; Ps 66;   Galatians 4: 4-7;  Luke 2: 16-21 (click here for readings)

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. (Luke 2: 16-21)

January 1 is celebrated in the civil year as the start of a new year, but it is celebrated by the Church as part of the Octave of Christmas, and, more specifically, as the Feast or Solemnity of Mary under the title of the Mother of God. This is Mary’s greatest and most fundamental title and has been celebrated as such since the Church’s early centuries. The Church laid it down that Mary is to be considered as such in order to stress that Jesus is both truly man and truly God. He is man, yes, as fully and totally man as if he were never God. At the same time, he is God, as fully and totally God as if he were never man. Therefore when he was conceived of the Virgin Mary she became the mother of God, God the Son made man. At times people have thought that what is being claimed is that in some sense Mary is herself divine because she is the mother of one who is divine. After all, when our Lord spoke of God as his own Father, the Jews picked up stones to stone him because, in speaking of God as his own Father he was making himself equal to God. He was claiming to be divine. So, it is thought, to say that Mary is the Mother of God is to say that she is divine. But no. To deny that Mary is the mother of God the Son made man, and therefore is the mother of God would be to deny the incarnation. By the power of the Holy Spirit God truly became man. God the Son was truly conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit did not, as it were, merely place the incarnate fetus in the womb of Mary who was fundamentally not, then, her child. By the power of the Holy Spirit God implanted in her the seed and she received it as mother, and thus was the incarnation effected. Her DNA entered into the entire human constitution of God the Son made man and we may suppose that as a result the holy child was profoundly similar to his blessed mother in very many of his human characteristics. After all, there was no human father and he, God made man, was absolutely her son.

Thus is the Virgin Mary, full of grace and blessed among women, truly the Mother of God, not begetting him in his divinity, of course, but begetting him in his humanity. He was from all eternity the only-begotten Son of the Father, God from God and Light from Light, true God from true God. In and through him all things were made and thus he was the divine Creator of his blessed mother sustaining her constantly in being and all through her life pouring into her holy soul a constant stream of divine grace. At the same time, she was his mother. She was not the mother merely of his human self while not being the mother of his divine self. There was only one Self in Jesus, and that Self was divine. His divine Self assumed a human nature, and so he truly acquired a human mother. This human mother, this Virgin who was totally and only human, became by the power of the Holy Spirit, the mother of the man who was, is, and ever will be God. As the Church has ever taught by an exercise of her highest authority, the Virgin Mary is thus the Mother of God. Her dignity is thus beyond compare. No other creature can compare with her in dignity. She is the Queen Mother, mother of the King of kings and Lord of lords who is man, of course, but before and above all is God. The Church on January 1 wishes to place this great dogma before the faithful at the very start of every year above all to exalt the great truth of the Incarnation and also to exalt Mary as the help of Christians. She is the first and greatest Christian and she helps us by her powerful intercession and her example. In our Gospel scene today we are placed in the ordinariness and lowliness of the scene at Bethlehem. In that humble and obscure setting there was, in the sight of God, a most dazzling splendour. God the Son made man, the Child of the nations, lies in the arms of his most holy mother. By her side was her holy husband Joseph, the foster-father of the Child. We are there too. Let us place ourselves in the midst of that holy family and never depart from it.

Let us place ourselves by the side of our heavenly mother who is the mother of God the Son made man. Mary is not, of course, the mother of the Father because the Father did not become man. Nor, of course, is she the mother of the Holy Spirit because he did not become man. The only-begotten Son did become man and therefore Mary is his mother. She is thus the Mother of God and by the gift of Christ she is our heavenly mother helping us to love and follow him closely, with her as our model of the Christian life. Let us entrust ourselves to her motherly care.
                                                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

If you wish to read again the thoughts of the past week, click here

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Results! Always looking for 'results'! You ask me for photographs, for facts and figures.

I won't send you what you ask, because (though I respect the opposite opinion), I would then think I had acted with a view to making good on earth, and where I want to make good is in heaven.
(The Way, no.649)

If you wish to read further works of spiritual reading, click here

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October 8, 2008, Benedict XVI continues with the seventh of his Wednesday talks on St Paul

We now consider Paul’s relationship to the so-called "historical" Jesus. In a celebrated passage Paul states that "even though we once knew Christ according to

the flesh, we no longer know him in that way" (2 Cor 5:16). Here the Apostle does not claim that he knew Jesus during his earthly ministry, but rather that he once considered Jesus from a merely human standpoint. Significantly, Paul’s knowledge of Christ came from the preaching of the early Church. Both his initial rejection of Jesus and -- after his conversion on the road to Damascus -- his preaching of the glorified Christ were based on the Gospel as proclaimed by the first Christian community. In his Letters, Paul refers explicitly to the facts of Jesus’ earthly life, as well as to his teaching. His Letters also reflect many central themes and images drawn from the preaching of Jesus. Paul’s teaching on the Jesus’ identity as the Son of the Father, in whom we receive redemption and adoptive sonship, is clearly derived from the Lord’s own experience and teaching. In a word, Paul’s knowledge of Jesus and his proclamation of the risen Lord as God’s Son and our Saviour, was grounded in the life and preaching of Jesus himself.
(Continuing)

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