The Mother of God

The Virgin, Jesus, and Saint John the Baptist (1881), William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Christmas was a week ago. If you look around town, it seems like we’ve moved on. The lights are coming down, trees are being pitched to the side of the road, the stores are already moving on to sell their wares for the next holiday season, which I guess is Valentine’s Day.

But, as often seems to be the case, the Church is not so quick. Indeed, for us Christmas has just started. Only today do we end the Octave of Christmas, the special eight-day feast when each day is like a new Christmas all over again. And not for two more weeks does the liturgical season of Christmas finally end.

Why does the Church seem to linger on so? Well, for one reason, God’s ways are not our ways, and so too, the Church’s calendar is not always the same as the world’s. But for another, perhaps we take our time, because it’s only by doing so – me taking time to ponder, to reflect, to contemplate – that the depth of the mysteries of this season, or any other, become clear.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. In many ways, the theme of today’s feast is the same as that of Christmas – that the almighty God has become one of us – but now with one additional note – that he did so through one of us, by being born of a woman. Consider the following, not just about Jesus but about Mary too:

- The Infinite, Eternal, Almighty One now becomes an infant, held in his mother’s arms.

- He whom the very heavens cannot contain, who holds all creation together in himself, the Alpha and the Omega, now was carried in a mother’s womb and cradled in her lap.

- He who looks down upon all creation now looks up into his mother’s eyes.

- The hand from which formed the universe, the hand which guides the stars and the heavens in their courses, now stretches out to grasp his mother’s finger.

- The mighty Word, the very utterance of the Father, who was with God and was God from the beginning, is now expressed in the cooing and crying of an infant.

- He who is our food, the Bread of Life, who gives us his own Body to eat, is himself fed by the body of his mother.

My friends, there would have been no Christmas without Mary; we would not have Jesus without her. As we begin this new year, let us reflect again upon the wondrous love by which God chose one of us to be his own mother and our mother by his grace. Each of us has some area of our life – some pain, some fear, some weakness – that needs her love, her renewal, her intercession. Let us turn again to she who is our Lord’s mother, and our mother by grace, that through her we might encounter again, cradled in her lap, the newborn Lord.

O Mary, loving Mother of the Redeemer, pray for us.