HOMILY for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
Numbers 6:22-27; Ps 66; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
The coming of a new year always brings with it optimism, hope, and much promise. Although the Jubilee of Hope has now concluded, nevertheless that year-long celebration in Rome only served to remind us Christians that our hope is well founded. For, like Mary our Mother, we place our hope, ultimately, in God who we ask to “be gracious and bless us” (Ps 66:2).
But this first day of the secular new year is for us Christians, the eighth day of Christmas, the octave day. And, as St Augustine says, the number eight is that of new beginnings coming after the completion of the week, and returning to the beginning, the origin. We return to the source of our hope, which is the Incarnation of Christ the Eternal Word of God who, “when the fullness of time had come”, was “born of woman”, and was found by poor shepherds “lying in a manger” at Bethlehem under the adoring gaze of Joseph and Mary. On this eighth day, therefore we return to that which is the origin of our Christian life and the source of our hope, namely, God-with-us, present in the Eucharist. For the Word who becomes flesh and is born of Mary is substantially with us in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar. Christ unites himself to our flesh, so as to make of our hearts and our lives a true Bethlehem, a living House for him, the living Bread that has come down from heaven. So, we Christians base our hope on the promises of Christ, indeed, on the promise that is Christ; with Mary our mother we silently and contemplatively “treasure up all these things, pondering them in our heart”. The Rosary, Mary’s gift to us, is still the most beautiful way to ponder the mysteries of our salvation, with the Incarnation at the very heart of them all.
Today’s Gospel also leads us to ponder Christ’s saving mission, for this is why he is born for us, so as to redeem us in the flesh. Thus, on the eighth day, Christ is circumcised, and this initiated a new covenant between God and humanity. For at his circumcision, Christ first shed his blood for us, to redeem us, both Jews and Gentiles alike, and this becomes a pledge of his sacrifice on the Cross, where his precious Blood was shed for the salvation of all. St Thomas observes that “[Christ] took upon Himself circumcision… [in order] to accomplish a spiritual circumcision in us”. (ST IIIa, 37, 1 ad 3) Hence Christ was circumcised so that we are purified from our sins; so as to cut us off from our sins, setting us apart by his grace from all those things that hold us back from following God fully. This is the promise he makes to us year after year: that his precious Blood is sufficient to forgive us and convert us. So, our hope for a better new year is founded on this promise of God’s grace for without him we can do nothing. The acknowledgment of God’s grace and salvation is made manifest when the babe of Bethlehem is named ‘Jesus’ which means ‘God saves’. So, to call upon Jesus’s name, which we do repeatedly when we pray the Rosary, is to call on God to save us, to be our salvation; to come to our aid in our weakness, and to sanctify us by making us become like Christ in his virtues. And in that same prayer we repeatedly seek the intercession of the Mother of God that we might become more like her divine Son.
For Christ, by his Incarnation, has hypostatically united himself to our humanity; God is married to Man, and he has thus forever changed our human destiny. No longer shall we called ‘Desolate’ and ‘Forsaken’, as Isaiah says, but we shall be called ‘Married’ and ‘God delights in us’. Artists and poets and theologians have all marvelled at how Our Lady exemplifies the delight that God has in a human person, she who is immaculate and thus the most beautiful creature he has ever made. And yet, today’s feast which gives to Our Lady the title Theotokos which was dogmatised at the Council of Ephesus in 431, doesn’t so much focus on Mary as it does on Jesus Christ. Specifically, it draws out the implication of the Incarnation, which is to say that from the moment the Word took flesh in the Virgin’s immaculate womb, the person of Jesus Christ was always both God and human because the human and divine natures were hypostatically united in him. As St Cyril of Alexandria said: “We must not think that the holy Virgin gave birth to some unspecified man, into whom the Word descended later; no, we must believe that there was one single reality from the first moment in his Mother’s womb… This is why we do not hesitate to call the holy virgin Theotókos, not in the sense that the divine nature of the Word took its origin from the holy Virgin, but in the sense that he took his holy body, gifted with a rational soul, from her. Yet, because the Word is hypostatically united to this body, one can say that he [the eternal Word] was truly born according to the flesh” And, indeed, as St Paul says, “born of woman, born under the law” in order to redeem us, and give us a share in his divine sonship.
In the words of one of my favourite antiphons, sung at Vespers on this Octave day of Christmas: “O wonderful exchange! The Creator of human nature took on a human body and was born of the Virgin. He became man without having a human father and has bestowed on us his divine nature.” This miracle of grace is the source of our hope, and it comes to be, even now, in the wonderful exchange that takes place in this, in every, Holy Mass. O admirable commercium! O magnum mysterium! O venite adoremus!
