Mary guides us into the New Year

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

Today we continue to celebrate the great mystery of the Incarnation, God become man and dwelling among us! It is the octave day of Christmas, and we pray as if it were Christmas day… the joy of this feast is too great to be contained in just one day! And so, I greet you once again: Merry Christmas! We prepare to enter into a new civil year, it is true, and very rightly should we wish one another a Happy New Year, but the mysteries of our faith come first and go deeper.

The title with which we honor Mary today goes back to the earliest centuries of the Church, a time of great tumult and theological debate. There are four great ecumenical councils in those early centuries that hashed out how we should express our belief in Jesus Christ, God and man, and in the Holy Trinity – One God, Three Persons! These may not be household names, but they stand at the very roots of our faith and the life of our Church: the Council of Nicaea in 325, the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451. You’re already familiar with the first two, although you may not know it! The creed we recite every Sunday and Holy Day at Mass is most properly called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, although that’s such a mouthful we normally just say the Nicene Creed! However, it’s the third ecumenical council, the Council of Ephesus, that concerns us today.

A priest and theologian by the name of Nestorius started a controversy back then, because he proposed that it was not proper to call Mary the Theotokos, which is Greek for the “God-bearer” or the Mother of God. He had a good intention… he thought that this somehow diminished Jesus’ humanity. However, this title, Theotokos, had been used in popular prayer for centuries. As the debate developed, it became clear that not only was this title, Theotokos, the Mother of God, appropriate, but it was actually very important. By calling Mary the Mother of God, in one Greek word the whole mystery of the Incarnation was captured – Jesus had a mother, Mary, and thus the son of a human mother is himself fully human. At the same time, Jesus is the Son of the Father, the Divine Logos, the Word of God, and so He is fully God. And, he isn’t some sort of split personality or hybrid, but one person, God and man. By uniting a human attribute, having a mother, and the truth that Jesus is God in one word, we are constantly reminded of this profound mystery that God Himself came among us as one like us in all things but sin.

Now, this is all very well and good, it’s important history, but what does this have to do with us on this New Year’s Day? Is there more to this than ancient history? Very much so… for this truth, this mystery, lies at the very heart of our hope and our journey into God’s grace.

Listen again to Paul’s VERY succinct expression of this mystery:

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. As proof that you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir, through God.

It is precisely by this man born of woman, Jesus, that we are adopted by God and saved. We are no longer slaves, although we often seem to be, for we have been bought and freed at a great price. God in His infinite power, demonstrated infinite humility and respect for our precarious freedom… He came to us gently, quietly, as one like us, to save us. Every time this mystery is proclaimed to us, we face a profound question: How will we respond?

It is here that Mary herself becomes such a great help to us. The mystery of calling Mary Theotokos, the God Bearer, the Mother of God actually had everything to do with Jesus Christ. The theological debate wasn’t primarily about Mary…which is fitting, because Mary wasn’t primarily about herself! She was all about God, about doing His will. Her words can and should become ours: “Be it done unto me according to your word!” If we will say that to God with Mary, then God will gently and sweetly draw us into His mysterious and beautiful and loving plan of redemption, working in us and through us to save us, and also the whole world.

So we honor today the Mother of God who shows us how gently God comes to save us, and shows us how to respond to that offer of perfect freedom. Do you know what Mary’s last recorded words were? It was at the Wedding Feast of Cana, and she said in reference to her Son, “Do whatever He tells you.” As we give thanks to God for the year that has past, and as we ask His blessing on the year ahead, let us also ask Mary’s intercession, follow her example, and allow those beautiful words to echo in our hearts in the days and weeks and months ahead, “Do whatever Jesus tells you.”

The Greek letters in the red circle to the left of Mary's head are an abbreviation of "Mary" and those to the right are an abbreviation of "Theotokou," the grammatically adapted version of the title Theotokos

 + A. M. D. G. +