Mary, Mother of God Year A
Numbers 6:22–27
Psalm 67:2–3, 5, 6, 8
Galatians 4:4–7
Luke 2:16–21
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is one of us. She responded to God’s invitation, giving herself completely. God filled her. She took God for all He is worth. Our human nature received the highest gift possible.
Theotokos, the title we translate as “Mother of God,” is an affirmation of our faith in the divinity of Jesus. It says God gave all He is to us, and Mary, in our name, accepted the gift. Now, what does this mean for us?
On the eighth day, Mary and Joseph attended to their duty by Jesus: They gave Him a place among the people of God through circumcision. They acknowledged Him as a unique individual: They named Him Jesus. They gave Him His purpose: salvation of His people. They accepted Him into His destiny: son of Joseph, son of David.
The mystery of time reveals our capacity to live as immortal beings in a passing world. As a world, we recognize ever more clearly our interdependence.
Mary points out that the salvation of the world comes to us, not by human invention, but by free, willful, fully human cooperation with God’s ingenuity, God’s plan of salvation revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ. Salvation is ours, not by our creative action, but by our willingness to admit God’s creative power.
We get a different message very subtly when the world continues to focus on “rights” and “liberties” that are only masks for our weakness and sins in the face of temptations while ignoring our responsibilities and true freedom.
We get a different message openly when the world tells us that we who are believers in Christ do not have a “right” to share and speak of our faith in public anywhere and to put it into practice when we are involved in the world around us. We fail to realize the power given to us in Christ when we act as if He were merely an earthly reformer who had compassion and a good idea or two that we might want to try out.
Calling Mary “Mother of God” is not about Mary. It is about Jesus. Jesus is God. Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the Word made flesh, God Incarnate, God the Son Who acts in our world and is given human nature through the power of the Holy Spirit, with Mary’s cooperation and personal acceptance.
Once we have acknowledged the Son of Mary’s Divinity of Person, then we can see what the divine motherhood does for Mary and for us. It puts us back in the game, God’s own game, God’s plan for human beings, for human nature as such, and indeed for all of creation.
When we start with this, we see things differently. We begin to understand that the answers to our problems won’t be found in mastering technology or in controlling “our rights.”
The answers to our problems won’t be found in the elimination of persons who are inconvenient, either in the womb or nearing the end of life or across the wrong border or having “old-fashioned ideas” such as believing in the power of God to intervene in our world.
The answers to our problems are found in contemplating, pondering in our hearts, the Person of Jesus Christ and giving our lives over to His grace as Mary did.
We call Mary the Mother of God and rightly so, with a depth of truth that makes all the difference. The Church in our time – at the Second Vatican Council – also called her “Mother of the Church.”
We see the Mother of Jesus as our forerunner in the journey of salvation. She accepted Jesus into her very being. Along with Joseph, her husband, she gave Him a place in her heart and in her world, among her people. And God became One of us, fulfilling His own promise of salvation.
As we enter into a New Year, let us discover anew the blessing that Jesus is for us. For it is in the Person of Jesus that God our Father blesses us and keeps us! The Lord lets His face shine upon us and is gracious to us! The Lord looks upon us kindly and gives us peace!