“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
Today’s feast day, the “Feast Day of Mary the Mother of God”
is celebrated every year on January 1.
We don’t always have it on a Sunday.
We just have it on the first of the year;
the 8th day of the Octave of Christmas.
It doesn’t appear to us as a controversial feast day
but it has been a controversial feast day over many years
because there are those who claim that
Mary could not be the Mother of God;
she could be the Mother of Jesus but not the Mother of God.
The way our Catholic logic works is that
Jesus is both human and divine.
He is both man and God;
and therefore, Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
and ergo, the Mother of God.
In the early days and even during the Protestant Reformation,
this feast day caused a bit of a challenge for people
because how could God have a human mother?
And of course, that is the very contradiction of the incarnation
and we are called to ponder it in our heart as to what is celebrated.
We are not celebrating the Mother of Jesus.
We are celebrating the Mother of God.
Let’s break this open a little more to understand.
We celebrate Jesus’ incarnation at Christmas and this is the first bookend;
we celebrate that God chose to become one of us in his humanity.
We celebrate Christ’s humanity in a major way
in that celebration on Christmas day.
Then 8 days later, the 8th day of Christmas, which is today,
we celebrate that Mary is the Mother of God,
emphasizing Christ’s divinity.
In these two bookends we are called to participate.
Here is what is important:
to think about Mary as the Mother of God;
God in Jesus chose to take on our human condition.
He chose to be a child; not to be born as an adult,
which he could easily have done because he was God after all. Right?
He chose the vulnerability of a child and
that is the message of Christmas.
That whole vulnerability,
this God, who is willing to be vulnerable
but also chose to be born of a woman;
to have that vulnerability continue not just on the day of birth
but for many, many years.
Bear in mind that Jesus did not start
his public ministry until 30 years of age.
He lived at home until he was 30!
Now just think of that, all your sons and daughters
living at home until they are 30 years old.
In America, we have a great tradition
of having our young people leave the house at 18 years old.
But that is changing probably over necessity
because of home prices here.
It is also a great gift to have our children around.
Most mothers love to have their children around
even in their older years.
The point of this is that Jesus submitted himself
to Mary’s household for 30 years and
then Mary followed Jesus into his public ministry
even to the point of being at the foot of the cross.
She was there until the last moment.
All of this is great theology and it is all solid
but what does it mean for us in our daily life?
Jesus was very aware of his need for his parents,
but today we celebrate motherhood;
he was very aware of that need for his mother.
He honored that throughout his entire life
even to the last words on the cross
when he gave Mary to his best friend, John,
and gave John to Mary.
I’m wondering if we could honor the motherhood of God
by honoring our own mothers.
I’m not saying we are celebrating Mother’s Day,
but in some sense yes;
we recognize that we all, like Jesus,
are growing up in the needed the family unit.
He needed people around him to be who he was.
I think if we all reflect for a moment in our hearts
about the role our mothers played in our lives
and how important that was and is, maybe still;
how important it is for us to then acknowledge
that role of what motherhood does for us.
We all have our own mothers
but there are other people in our lives who act like mothers, too.
I know in my own life while my mother is passed away,
I still have lots of people in my life,
who act and care for me and love me like a mother.
I suspect that is true for many of us.
I am wondering if today we could honor our own vulnerability,
our own need for mothers in our own life;
and how powerful they have been to us;
and how incredibly important it is for us to acknowledge that.
Maybe today we could, if our mother is still alive,
tell them how much we love them
and how much we appreciate them;
and maybe those who have acted like mothers in our life
we could tell them how much we acknowledge
their love and support that we depend on.
If our mothers have passed on,
which I suspect is true for many of us like myself,
can we still talk to them and thank them in spirit
because we do believe that in the Communion of Saints
that those mothers are still guiding us,
still holding us, and still loving us.
That is the Mother of God who continues to do that
for the whole Church because what God has done in Mary
is to give her as a mother to us all.
Today in a practical way we can acknowledge our mothers in our life;
the love that has sustained us over the many years;
the love that has held us;
the love that has completed us
because that love is from God and when we return it to God,
it is a certain level of completion.
Today as we celebrate the Mother of God, Mary,
we celebrate our own mothers;
Mary’s motherhood of God and us
and the gift of love in our lives that sustains us each and every day
through our own mothers.
“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
