SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE – THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY, THE FEAST OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

Readings:

Numbers 6:22-27

Psalms 67:2-3 5-6, 8

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 2:16-21

We begin a New Calendar Year, with all that lies hidden from our eyes, by celebrating Mary, the Mother of God. Theologians view Mary in this way:

“In practice the Catholic Church looks upon the Mother of God as being an unbounded power in the realm of grace; in virtue of her divine motherhood Mary is simply the vastest, the most efficient, the most universal supernatural power in heaven and on earth, outside the three divine Persons.” (Dom Ansgar Vonier, o.s.b.)

Doesn’t make Mary seem very approachable! The Mary of popular piety, a piety that is well deserved, often can make Mary appear unapproachable. The great masters of painting often portray Mary in embroidered and impeccably clean robes, posing for pictures amid the squalor of a stable, yet not an extra piece of straw clings to her beautiful robes.

We can be grateful that cell phones and photographic equipment were unavailable at the time of Jesus, otherwise we would have had videos of Jesus’ birth, of Joseph shoveling out the stable, and Mary changing diapers. Such earthy examples had to have existed, and it behooves us to think of them from time to time in order to have a true appreciation of all that was included in Mary’s “yes” to God. Indeed, even the figures of our mangers are all polished up, and no matter how simple the person might be not a speck of grime shows on them.

While Mary is elevated to a place in Catholic piety which is beyond imagining, we do her devotion to God a disservice by cleansing her life of all its dirty little details. Mary did change diapers, she was tired by her journeys, she scrubbed floors, provided meals, and patiently put up with the hundreds of things she didn’t fully understand. It wasn’t just part of a package-deal she agreed to, as though she would be there for just the stand-in close up shots. Mary’s fiat, “thy will be done,” included agreeing to everything that was part of God’s plan, even the most ordinary and grimiest things life has to offer. The simple phrase: “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart,” indicated she did not take her role lightly.

Mary’s cult would go stronger and become even broader in scope during the centuries following the death of her Son on a cross. The title of theotokos, “mother of God,” was in use since the third century, but it was not until the fifth century, with the Council of Ephesus in 431 that the universal church proclaimed Mary “Mother of God” because “her Son Jesus is both God and man: one divine person from two natures (divine and human) intimately and hypostatically united.” Because Mary is Jesus’ mother, it is right that we see her as our mother as well, for, as our second reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians states, because of Mary we are “adopted sons and daughters,” no longer slaves but adopted sons and daughters.

Mary was chosen to be the “mother of God,” and as such she holds a special place in our hearts and in our lives. So many of us plead for intercession from her with her Son, and we look to her as a model of the kind of cooperation we should have with God’s will. All of us have a role to play in God’s plan for the entire world. May we cooperate with God’s request as fully and as joyfully as Mary, and may she lead us through any confusion we may encounter to a complete and full cooperation, knowing that cooperating with God’s plan brings the kind of personal fulfillment that we all long and strive for.