MARY MOTHER OF GOD - NEW YEAR DAY - WORLD PEACE DAY

Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

 

Feast of Mary, the Mother of God is a very appropriate way to begin a new year. This celebration reminds us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, is also our Heavenly Mother.  This is an occasion to renew our devotion to Mary, who is also Mother of the Church because she is our spiritual mother. 

As Mother of our Redeemer and of the redeemed, she reigns as Queen at the side of Christ the King. She is a powerful intercessor for all of our needs here on earth. The Church observes this day also as the World Day of Peace and invites us to pray specially for peace in the world.

The theme of the feast has always been about creating a culture of care. The Pope stresses the need to care and share tolerance for each other, and to create a society that focuses on good moral values and does not yield to the temptation to disregard others. The benefits of a peaceful society have been the emphasis of every year’s World Day of Peace.

Further, the message tells us that today there are many areas of the world in which forms of restrictions and limitations to religious freedom persist, both where communities of believers are a minority, and where communities of believers are not a minority, and where more sophisticated forms of discrimination and marginalization exist, on the cultural level and in the spheres of public, civil and political activity.

In the First Reading from the Book of Numbers we heard of the Lord’s blessing upon the Israelites. The Lord God is preparing the people of Israel for the journey toward the Promised Land. God has given them every advantage to make the journey to Canaan without any misfortune.  Now Israel belongs to God through the covenant on Sinai.  They are now given the privilege of pronouncing the name of God over the people which takes the form of a blessing.

In today’s Second Reading Paul says that God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as children.  The woman who bore Jesus is Mary. Since he is the son of God, she is rightly called Mother of God. Paul tells us that Jesus coming under the natural law has transformed us making us the children of God. No longer slaves and servants but heirs as sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of Jesus.

In today’s Gospel Luke describes the simple scene in the stable at Bethlehem. The setting is of a peasant family with a new born child has found hospitality and shelter in a facility shared with farm animals.  We see a man, a woman who has just given birth, and a baby Jesus lying in the manger. Truly primitive surroundings and yet this Baby is the Son of God and that young woman is the Mother of God. This is the great mystery of the Incarnation.

This feast of Mary the Mother of God is closely connected to the feast of Christmas and is the most important and oldest of the feasts of Mary. It is based on the source of her privileges: her divine motherhood. Jesus Christ, God’s Son “born of a woman,” came to deliver us from sin and make us children of God.

He is also Mary’s Son, and she, his mother, helps bring his blessings to the world. She is “truly the Mother of God and of the Redeemer…not merely passively engaged by God, but freely cooperating in the work of our salvation through faith and obedience.” 

Mary was not simply a passive instrument in God’s hands; rather she discovered and accepted new dimensions to her motherhood as her life unfolded.

Today, we are starting a new day and a New Year with inner knowledge and understanding of the greatness of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God.  We greet each other with the same blessing as in the first reading of today: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace.

May the peace of the Lord remain within us, our families and communities and bring us the joy and happiness in the year to come. The divine name appears in the Blessing, giving them life and warmth. The graciousness of God may remain with each one of us throughout the New Year.

- @Avinash Bitra OFM Cap.