Today we celebrate Mary, Mother of God. This is usually a Holy Day of Obligation, but since it falls on a Sunday, we just celebrate it today, no “extra” Masses for either Christmas or Mary this year. I’ll tell you, this is the best year ever for a priest's schedule - Christmas and Mary Mother of God falling on Sundays mean not a lot of extra “work.” Which is especially helpful for me this year.
As we celebrate Mary, Mother of God, it might be difficult to wrap our minds around “how” or “why” God (the God of the universe!) would be born of a human, but I believe it is helpful for us to understand that this is how close God wants to be to us, that He loves us as a father, and then He also gives us Mary as our mother.
A key to understanding this is found in the Eucharist. Saint Irenaeus once said that anyone who does not comprehend God's birth through Mary cannot comprehend the Eucharist either. And this makes sense. For, weighed down as we are by the effects of original sin, our tendency is to turn God & faith into an abstraction. And as humans we have a hard time with abstract concepts, we need things to be tangible to our senses. The “concreteness” of the Eucharist is given to us precisely to prevent us from that error of abstraction.
And it all begins when God takes on real, human flesh in the womb of Mary, the Mother of God. Father Raniero Cantalamessa reminds us that the Latin for “mother” - mater - comes from the word materia (“matter/material”). He says that by silently entering the womb of a woman, God comes down into the very heart of matter, concretely and “really.”
And the God who became flesh in a woman's womb is the same God who comes to us in “the heart of matter,” which is the Eucharist. Furthermore, as Pope John Paul II pointed out, not only does Mary lead us to Christ, but also Christ leads us to His Mother. As the Catechism expresses it, “Mary's function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes [the] unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power” (CCC, 970, quoting Lumen Gentium, 60).
God is all powerful and has no need for us, yet He wants us. Out of love for us, He chose to enter our world as the Christ-child and be one with us in all things but sin; out of His desire for us, He wanted to enter into our world, and Mary is an integral part of that.
In the same way that we can understand the concreteness of the Eucharist, we can also understand the concreteness of a mother’s love -- a father’s love too, but I think moreso a mother’s love. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.
In fact, at the Visitation Service for my mom, I preached about the greatest thing she showed, through the way she loved me and lived her life, was unconditional love.
We have to learn the Unconditional Love of God somehow, in a tangible and concrete way, and most often that is through our mother, at least first, and then our father too, and possibly others also, we just really need that concrete example of love that forgives and never brings it up again. A love that is always there - no strings attached - wanting what is best for us - willing what is best for us.
We need to know a love in this world that will help us to know whatever we do, or fail to do, we are still loved, which helps us to transfer that concrete understanding of true love into the abstract of Heaven. In this love we hopefully learn we are always able to go back to God our Father and Mary our Mother who love us unconditionally from Heaven.
And even though we don’t see Mary here on earth, she has appeared here on earth many times in Church approved apparitions. We just recently celebrated Our Lady of Gaudalupe, which is one of the most amazing apparitions that happened almost 500 years ago in Mexico City, you can still go there today and see the evidence.
But when Mary appeared to Juan Diego she said to him these loving words: “Listen, my son, to what I tell you now. Do not let anything worry or afflict you; do not fear illness nor any troublesome happening nor pain. Am I not here? I who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your life and health? Are you not in my embrace and in my prayers? What else do you need?”
This message was given to Juan Diego, but I believe it is for all of us, and it has been especially comforting to me these last few weeks. Jesus allows these types of apparition of Mary to help us learn how loved we truly are.
Jesus Christ leads us to His Mother so that through Her maternal mediation we will learn what it means to become God's sons, God's daughters. She leads us to the Fruit of her womb - the Eucharistic Jesus - whereby we become truly His brothers and sisters.
Saint John Vianney says that after the Lord had given us all He could - His Body and Blood to be Food for our souls - He willed also to give us the most precious thing He had left, which was His holy Mother.
One gift leads to the other. Saint Germanus of Constantinople called the Blessed Virgin Mary the table of food that fills us who are perishing through hunger with the Bread of Life.
In a world that is starving for true love, our challenge is two-fold: one, get to know God the Father and Mary our Mother, receiving their unconditional love, in order to appreciate our identity as sons and daughters; and two, try to share the concrete unconditional love of God with the world around us to help others who are starving to better comprehend the abstract love of Heaven.
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God… Pray for us.