Mary, Mother of God – Homily (2025)
Mary, Mother of God
Numbers 6:22-27
Psalm 67:2-3,5, 6, 8 (2a)
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:16-21
January 1, 2025
Today is important for various reasons.
For the secular world, today is New Year’s Day. The arrival of the new year brings hope for better things to come. The end of the present year leads us to reflect on the past year.
This reflection is good. We do well to follow the example of Mary when she heard others speak about her new baby. What did she do? “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
Looking ahead to the new year, we do well to pray for God’s help in the new year. We ask his blessing on the new year. I wrote our Prayers of the Faithful for today with this in mind.
Our first reading centers on God’s blessing. It provides the Lord’s instructions of how to bless the Israelites. “The LORD bless you and keep you! The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!”
To invoke God’s blessing is much more than just hopeful words. To bless is to invoke the Lord’s name and to ask him to grant those who receive the blessing his abundant grace.
When we receive God’s grace, the appropriate response is to praise him with our thanksgiving. Mary does this when she says, “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name” in her Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).
The celebration of the beginning of a new year is a good time to reflect on our spiritual lives.
However, the fact that today is New Year’s Day has nothing to do with why today is a holy day of obligation.
Eight days ago, we celebrated something wonderful. It was the moment “when the fullness of time had come,” the day when “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.”
When the shepherds heard this good news of great joy, they “went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in in the manger.”
So began our Christmas Octave.
An octave is a period of eight days. Jesus rose on the eighth day. On the eighth day, new life is revealed to us.
Eight days after the birth of Jesus, as dictated for the Jews, Mary and Joseph took Jesus for his circumcision. Today concludes the Christmas Octave.
Mary brought Jesus for the prescribed rites as a good Jewish mother. Today we honor her as the mother of Jesus. As the mother of Jesus, she is the Mother of God. This is the occasion that makes today a holy day of obligation.
With this in mind, it is still a good time to reflect. Have you reflected on the past year?
What is not right in our world?
There is much division. There is war. This saddens us and it saddens God. The division and wars we have in our world are not what God intends.
Here I turn back to the final words of the first reading on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, “he shall be peace.”
Who is the “he”?
Micah is prophesizing about the birth of the “one who is to be ruler in Israel.” He is speaking of Jesus.
He does not say that Jesus will bring peace. Rather, the prophecy says, “he shall be peace.” Jesus is “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.”
Jesus is the peace that changes our very lives.
Thus, while today is New Year’s Day and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, it is appropriate that it is also the World Day of Peace.
For there to be peace, all people need to have what they need.
For there to be peace, all people need to be treated as equals for we are all loved equally by God.
For there to be peace, all people need to stop seeking their own will and instead seek to do God’s Will in all things.
Mary gave herself totally to God when she said, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Are you willing to make Mary’s words your own as we begin a new year?