Skip to main content

Gospel: Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

Today, we are celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God and the passage will be taken from the Gospel according to St Luke.

So they hurried away and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child they repeated what they have been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds said to them.

As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.

And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they have heard and seen, just as they have been told.

When the eighth day came and the child was circumcized, they gave him the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before his conception.


During January 1, New Year's Day, we complete the octave celebration of Christmas Day. It's an often a overlooked liturgical fact that we celebrate Christmas Day for eight straight days. We do this also with Easter Day, which concludes with the great celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday.

On this, the eighth octave of Christmas, we turn our focus to the unique and beautiful fact that God chose to enter our world through a human mother. Mary is called the "Mother of God" for the simple fact that her Son is God. She was not the mother of her Son's flesh alone, nor the mother of his human nature. This is because the person of Jesus, the Son of God, is one person. And that one person took on flesh within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Though becoming the Mother of God was a pure gift from Heaven and not something that Mother Mary merited on her own, there was one particular quality that she had that made her uniquely qualified to fulfill this role. That quality was her immaculate nature.

First, Mother Mary was preserved from all sin when she was conceived within the womb of her mother, St Anne. This special grace was a grace that was imparted to her from the future life, death, and resurrection of her Son. It was the grace of salvation, but God chose to take that gift of grace and transcend time to impart it to her at the moment of her conception, thus making her the perfect and pure instrument necessary to bring forth God into the world.

Second, Mother Mary remained faithful to this gift of grace throughout her life, never choosing to sin, never wavering, never turning from God. She remained immaculate throughout her life. Interestingly, it is this choice of hers, to be forever remain obedient to the will of God in every way, that makes her more fully the Mother of God than the simple act of bearing him within her womb. Her act of perfect unity with the will of God throughout her life makes her, also, the perfect mother of divine grace and mercy and perpetually the spiritual Mother of God, continually and perfectly bringing him into our world.

Reflect, today, upon these most solemn mystery of our faith. This eighth day of the Octave of Christmas is a solemn celebration, a celebration worthy of our pondering. The Scripture above reveals not only how our Blessed Mother approached this mystery but also how we are to approach it. She "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart." Let us reflect this mystery, also, in our hearts and allow the grace of this holy celebration to fill us with joy and gratitude.

Amen.

x------x

Picture from Pixabay.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joint Meetings of the Australian Parliament

 A joint meeting of the Australian Parliament is a convening of members of the Senate and House of Representatives sitting together as a single legislative body. Australia has a bicameral federal Parliament, consisting of the Senate and House of Representatives. Subject to the Constitution of Australia, each House has its own rules, standing orders and procedures, its own presiding officer, and meets separately, at dates and times it alone decides. However, there are some occasions when the two Houses have come together as a single body. Unlike the Opening of Parliament which is officially made by the Governor-General at the Senate premises, the joint sessions are held at the House of Representatives chamber. The reasons of joint meetings have included: To resolve deadlocks between the Houses following the trigger of a double dissolution To fill casual vacancies in the representation of the territories in the Senate A special commemorative joint sitting to Celebrate the Centenary o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage

 Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage or the Virgin of Antipolo is a seventeenth century Roman Catholic wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as venerated in the Philippines. This Black Madonna is enshrined in Antipolo Cathedral in the Sierra Madre mountains east of Metro Manila. The image was brought to the country by Governor-General Juan Niño de Tabora from Mexico via the galleon El Almirante  in 1626. His safe voyage across the Pacific Ocean was attributed to the image, which was then given the title "Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage." It was substantiated later by six other successful voyages of the Manila-Acapulco Galleons witb the image aboard as its patroness. Pope Pius XI issued a Pontifical decree to crown the image in 1925. The statue is one of the most celebrated Marian images in the Philippines, having mentioned by national martyr Jose Rizal in his writings. From May to July each year, the image attracts millions of pilgrims from all over the country and abroad. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...
Post a Comment
Read more