Homily for Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

Homily for the Solemnity of
Mary, Mother of God

January 1, 2025
Luke 2: 16-21
Gal 4: 4-7
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

Madonna with Sleeping Child
(Andrea Mantegna)

Liturgically, today’s a mass of confusion (pun intended).  We begin a new calendar year by invoking God’s blessing upon his people.  It’s World Day of Peace, and we pray that God bless the whole world with that gift from heaven, more noted for its absence.

It’s the octave day of Christ’s birth, and we repeat one of the gospel readings from Christmas Day, adding the verse about Jesus’ circumcision and naming.  We’re all (Some here, myself included, are) old enuf to remember when the feast was called “the Circumcision of the Lord.”  Now it’s called the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.  She appears in the gospel reading and, unnamed, in the epistle on account of her part in God’s plan to adopt us as his children.

God’s plan is evident in the Christ Child’s naming:  Jesus, “YHWH is salvation.”  He’s named our Savior, “the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21).  In that role of savior, he brings us into God’s family.  He “ransoms those under the law,” Paul says (Gal 4:5); the law would condemn us all because of our transgressions.

The name of Jesus—a name that stands for his whole person, for his nature, for his salvation—is a source of blessing for us.  He personalizes for every Christian the blessing that Aaron was told to bestow on the Israelites (Num 6:22-27).  He’s the embodiment of divine graciousness and kindness (6:25-26).  He blesses his family—all God’s adopted children—with the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit that overshadowed Mary, God the Father’s most highly favored one (Luke 1:28).

Those who heard from the shepherds about their angelic visitation and their finding the child in the manger “were amazed,” Luke tells us (2:18).  The shepherds must have told a lot of people what they’d seen and heard.  Were they all so amazed that the experience changed their lives?  We have no evidence of that.  Theirs may have been an amazement like what we feel when we watch a magician at work or the athletic feats of Shohei Ohtani or Patrick Mahomes.  We gape, then go on about our ordinary lives, unfazed, unchanged.

In contrast to Mother Mary, who “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (2:19).  What she learned from her meditations, she eventually used to teach her Son, to help him grow from infant to adolescent to mature man, to help him become Jesus, YHWH saves.  Given to all of us as mother at the culmination of Jesus’ saving activity (John 20:26-27), she remains our mother, teacher, and helper in our adopted sonship, leading us in our lives as disciples toward the inheritance (cf. Gal 4:7) that Jesus Savior wants to share with us.