MYSTERY OF THE MOTHER OF GOD

SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD

Numb 6:22-27; Ps 67:2-3,5-6,8; Gal 4:4-7; Lk 2:16-21

Mary Treasured All These in Her Heart

We celebrate the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, with the universal Church. This is the greatest title we can ever give to a human being. Properly speaking, God has no mother, for God is the supreme Spirit that exists of himself alone. But this lofty title is given to the Blessed Virgin Mary to invite us to a deeper appreciation of the mystery of our salvation. The Church fittingly celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God at the beginning of the year, for this mystery marks the beginning of human salvation and the year of the Lord. The year the scriptures call the year favourable or acceptable to the Lord our God. It is a spiritual year reckoned differently from the way we understand the physical year. It is a new spiritual year in which the Lord our God commenced the recreation of the new heaven and earth. It is a year that began with God’s fulfilment of his original promise to create a new woman with divine and eternal enmity between her and the serpent, who corrupted the old woman and the old world with its evil seed. This solemnity, therefore, marks a new spiritual year for the redeemed.

The Blessed Virgin Mary has the lofty title of the Mother of God, from what God proposed to do for the redemption of mankind when the moment had become ripe for the salvation of man. Saint Paul echoes the same understanding of the opportune time for the year of the Lord in the passage from his letter to the Galatians. “When the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons.” Saint Paul suggests the lofty title here, as corresponding to the lofty idea of our salvation in Jesus Christ. If the One who is born of the woman is the Eternal Son of God, God from God, and Light from Light, then the Son of Man who is born of the woman has not ceased to be the Son of God. The proper understanding of our faith in the divinity of the Son of Man does not allow us to stop short of addressing the woman who is the mother of the Son of Man as the Mother of God. It makes no sense to the human mind. But that is the character of all mysteries. It makes the same sense, unclear as it is to our minds, as the fact of our being called children of God, as the Holy Spirit affirms in us. So, the mystery of the Mother of God extends and overflows into our adoption as children of God; for if we are born of God, then we share the nature of God. Saint Paul argues this: “The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’, and it is this that makes you a son, you are not a slave anymore; and if God has made you son, then he has made you heir.” It is a mystery that we are yet to comprehend.

It is exactly what God proposed to do from the very moment of our fall in Adam and Eve. He offered us salvation immediately through his Word. The statement: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring,” implies a woman who will arise out of the human stock, but preserved from the contamination of evil by the Word. The enmity was full-blown when the Eternal Word of God was fully received in our human nature. The proper receptacle of the Word in human nature is Mary, the Woman, who is the Mother of God. Thus, the following statements imply the same thing: God created enmity between the serpent and the woman; Mary is the Mother of God; the Word became flesh. The Word was fully conceived in human nature when the woman was found without any seed of evil; therefore, the woman conceived and brought forth God the Son. God anticipated this revelation of the Word in the work of salvation in man when he gave Aaron and his children the rite of blessing the people. “This is how you are to bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them: ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord let his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord uncover his face to you and bring you peace.’” The title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, indicates the fullness of the blessings of God on us.

Thus, the prayer of the Psalmist was fully granted when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is, when we realised that the Woman is the Mother of God. “O God, be gracious and bless us and let your face shed its light upon us. So will your ways be known upon earth and all nations learn your saving help.” The meaning of this mystery is hidden from our minds as it was to the shepherds who received the Good News from the angels. “The shepherds hurried away to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child, they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say.” The deep, profound, and eternal meanings of these lofty things that God gave to us in a simple manner would remain hidden unless we wait on God in prayer like Mary, our mother. “As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God, that we may be children of God.

Let us pray: O God, who through the fruitful virginity of Blessed Mary bestowed on the human race the grace of eternal salvation, grant, we pray, that we may experience the intercession of her, through whom we were found worthy to receive the author of life, Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.