Solemnity Of Mary the Mother of God

One of the long lasting memories of Christmas that I have goes back to my childhood. The memory is of coming down stairs on Christmas morning and going into our living room where the Christmas tree was. In our home we never trimmed the tree until Christmas Eve. We children would have to go to bed before the trimming was finished. So the first thing we saw on those early Christmas mornings was the Christmas tree, the floor under the tree covered with presents, and the tree wondrously  aglow with lights and decorations, shining in the still darkened room. It was a feeling unlike any other feeling any other time of the year.

The wondrous light, shining in the darkest of nights, filling those who saw it with wonder is one of the deepest images of Christmas. We sing: “Silent night, holy night, all is calm all is bright…glory streams from heaven afar… Silent night! Holy night! Son of God, love’s pure light. Radiant beams from Thy Holy Face, With the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth! Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth! This most popular of Christmas carols gives us an image that we find very beautiful and hopeful.

But sometimes, as we are inclined to do, we sentimentalize things in our lives, and we can sentimentalize Christmas. In other words, we treat, Christmas with exaggerated feelings of tenderness or nostalgia. That would not be the real Christmas any more than it would be our real life. When we read about the Birth of Jesus in the Bible, it is filled with challenges and fears, of upset and hardship. In other words it is more like the way our lives really are.

 At Christmas we heard Isaiah say: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”We often walk in darkness. We walk through our lives experiencing fear and worry, we suffer pain and loss. So we turn our eyes towards the light that will shine in our darkness. That light is the one whose birth we celebrate during this Christmas season. That light is Jesus, born at Christmas, Son of God.

At Christmas God with humble love became a human being like us. Now we know what family life is like. We know all about our worries and our fears and our times of darkness. Now, because of Christmas, so does God. Jesus has lived as we live, he too has known worries and fears; he like us has walked in darkness. Jesus is “God with us;” Jesus is God’s salvation in the flesh for us. And he lived in a family as we do and so he became a blessing and a guide for each and every family on earth. All this was the meaning of the Feast of the Holy Family which we celebrated this past Sunday.

Today, for Catholic people, is the Octave Day of Christmas. We celebrate Christmas Day for eight days and today we conclude it with the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. This great Feast Day of the Christian Church celebrates the meaning for us of the Birth of God’s Son into our world. Because of Jesus, we too are God’s sons and daughters, as St. Paul teaches us in his Letter to the Galatians.

So this is Christmas: God becomes a human being for us with Jesus’ birth, Jesus lives as a member of a family as we do, and by his coming he has made us his brothers and sisters, sons and daughters in his family. In this family God is our Father and Mary has been given to us as our mother and we are all brothers and sisters. That is a wonderful dignity we have. And it is the key to our happiness and fullness of life.

This fraternity, this being brothers and sisters, all of us brothers and sisters is where our longing for peace in our world lies. Pope Francis in his message for this World Day of Peace says that all of us have within us “a vocation to form a community composed of brothers and sisters who accept and care for one another.” We Catholics know that we are brothers and sisters in the family of God. We know that we are called by God to form a community of sisters and brothers who need to care for one another and to accept one another. 

However, Pope Francis, in his message for this new year, reminds us that this vocation to care for one another is frequently denied and ignored in a world marked by, what Francis calls a “globalization of indifference.” This indifference gradually can leave us unmoved by the suffering of others and we become closed in on ourselves.

We all know about the ideas that are thrown about today which forcefully promote individualism and self centeredness. And, having just lived through another Christmas shopping season and find ourselves immersed in Boxing Day and boxing week sales, we know all about materialistic consumerism. All of this weakens our bonds with one another and promotes instead a “throw away” mentality. This then leads to contempt for, and indeed the abandonment of, the weakest brothers and sisters and those who society considered “useless”. 

How can we learn to look upon and to treat each and every person we meet and know as a true sister or brother? We do what we always do when we seek answers to our questions of life; we turn to God and listen to what God says to us. In the Gospel today there are two things we are called to do so that we can live as God’s children, members of God’s family, and brothers and sisters of God’s Son, Jesus. We look to what the Gospel says about Mary and we look to what the Gospel says about the Shepherds of Bethlehem.

St. Luke writes that the shepherds “made known what had been told them about this child.” When Mary heard what they said, St. Luke tells us:“Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”.

How often do we take time to think about our Christian Faith? How often do we take time to think about what we have been taught as Catholics and how it touches our lives? Mary teaches us to make that time. Reflect on how our Catholic faith has been a light to us in our lives or a strength in our lives or a hope in our lives.

How often do you think about Jesus who has been an intimate and personal part of your life since your baptism?  How often do you think about the wonderful things that come from being a part, not only of our human families, but a part of the family of God, who is the Father of all and a part of the family of Jesus who is brother of all.

As Pope Francis says, we must not be closed in on ourselves. Rather we are called to spread this message, to spread this love to the world around us. Like the Shepherds, we must make know what we have learned and what we have seen in our lives of God who loves us and of Jesus who came to dwell within us as the light in our darkness and the saviour from all that threatens us. This is the light that we can make shine in the darkness which covers so many people around us.

We believe the message of the angel: “Today is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ, the Lord.” That enables us to sing with peace and real happiness: Silent night! Holy night! Son of God, love’s pure light. Radiant beams from Thy Holy Face With the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth! Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth! Here we find the foundation for a blessed and happy New Year, a New Year in which we seek the blessing of God on our lives and a New Year in which we celebrate with gratitude and joy the blessings which God continues to give to us.