SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD
Today, as many in the world celebrate New Year, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. It is the oldest of all Marian feasts in our liturgy. In our attempt to understand God, we grow in comprehension of the meaning of the Incarnation in our world and lives. It is in this light that we must reflect on the Virgin Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God, Mother of Jesus incarnate. And just as Mary pondered all things in her heart, so does the church reflect on her.

Today’s readings help clarify this devotion, because they so intimately hint at the essential connection between Mary and her Son. Paul’s letter to the Galatians tells us that by being born of a woman, born under the law, the son of God fully participates in the human condition. He is one of us, because of Mary. The very fact of Mary’s embodiedness, her fleshiness, and therefore Jesus’ own body, is the saving link between God and humanity. Through this link Paul writes that we become heirs of Christ, and intimately understand God as Abba, the way her son understood His Father. It is Mary’s profound kinship with Jesus that allows us to see in her a pledge of the destiny that God has promised all his children. Mary becomes the measure of who we are and who we are to be. The great 14 ^th century English mystic Dame Julian of Norwich wrote that in Mary “our Lord speaks to all mankind as [if he] were [speaking] to one person… [Saying] Do you want to see in her how you are loved?” In effect, in understanding Mary we begin to understand ourselves as loved by God.

In the gospel we see that the shepherds, considered among the marginalized, the poor, the outsider, are those first informed of Christ’s birth, and who first visit the infant Jesus. It is the outsider who bears the good news of what the angels have announced: that the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born. It is the outsider that helps Mary to deeply know her son. In Luke, Mary represents the ideal believer, for she hears the good news and ponders it in her heart, and fully responds to it. Her heart becomes the place of discovering Jesus. Mary’s entire life and church’s entire life is centered on this process of pondering who this child really is. Mary in contemplating her son becomes the church reflecting on the Incarnation. It is this aspect of Mary’s motherhood that is most important for our new year.

We would be wrong to say that Mary fully knew the full significance of her son from the moment of annunciation. She pondered on who that child would be ever since her “YES” at the annunciation until holding his dead body, the same body that had been within her womb. And each step of the way she had to re-assert that “YES” of the annunciation, ever and more deeply understanding what her response meant. She spent her life pondering the visible word of God. Mary invites every one of us to ponder that word in scripture, in each other, and in the created world among us.

Reflection calls for response. And Mary’s response to God should not to be thought of as simply a choice between good and bad, right or wrong. Mary gives us an example of what our choices as Christians really implies: that genuine choice we make reveals who we are. In our choices we act out of our self, and tell of our self: Christian, Human. Freedom of choice is not about what we want, what we wear or what we own: it is about how we reveal and define ourselves on our journey to God.

Mary is blessed among women. And we are told in the great Aaronic blessing from the Book of Numbers in today’s first reading that God will smile upon those he loves and who love him that his face will shine upon them. And today, this New Year’s day, we know that face that smiles upon Mary as she holds him in her arms, presenting him to his Father in the Temple. This is the face we yearn to see, the face of God made flesh, born of the Virgin Mary.