Mary, Mother of God

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“So they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. When they saw the child, they repeated what had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds said to them. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:16-19).

The shepherds were the first to discover Mary as Mother. They were the first to adore. So, we can thank God that we celebrate with Him today what millions who are celebrating may not really know what they are celebrating.

We celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, the greatest privilege that Our Lady could have. The supreme dignity of the Mother of God puts her in a world apart. She is the great wonder work of God. She stands above all beings of the universe. Through her vocation, she enjoys an unprecedented intimacy with the three Divine Persons.

The foundation of the mystery of Mary lies in her divine Motherhood. All her divine privileges are linked to that. Because she was the Mother of God, she had to be immaculately conceived, preserved immune from sin, assumed into heaven, ever virgin.

So, her divine Maternity is an unparalleled privilege. No greater union is possible between humanity and the Deity. The Entrance Antiphon of today's Mass says, “Hail, Holy Mother, the Child to whom you gave birth is the King of heaven and earth forever.”

The longest speech that Our Lady ever made in her life was the Magnificat. In it, she talked about God, not about herself: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. He has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid. Henceforth, all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:46-48).

And so, we could tell Our Lady that we want our whole life to be like a Magnificat: our soul to magnify the Lord, that we might grow in humility as Our Lord lifts up the humble, rejects the proud, and puts down the proud in the conceit of their hearts.

One poet penned the words: “Angels and archangels may have gathered there, cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; But only His Mother in her maiden bliss, Worships the Beloved with a kiss. What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring Him a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part; Yet what can I give Him: I can give Him my heart?” (Christina Rossetti, A Christmas Carol).

From the moment that Our Lady gave her word of approval to the Angel, an extraordinary thing began to happen to her: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

It was an extraordinary thing, and yet it appeared so ordinary. A child was conceived and began to develop. But this Child was God. Mary, a young girl, began to give life to God.

For the next nine months, everything she did was contributing to the great project of bringing God into the world. God the life-giver was dependent on a young girl for His life. For these nine months, she folded in and cherished the life within her, giving herself completely to bring Him to life.

There are many things we learn from Our Lady: how to nourish that life within us. In an equally extraordinary way, God grows in our lives in grace too. Like the seed in winter, God grows silently and patiently, often unnoticed in darkness.

Think about this in relation to the life of God growing in the souls of your children—specifically, this Christmas, these days—the messages they're getting through their eyes, through their ears. Messages of love.

We need to tune to the growth of God and develop the patient waiting that Mary practiced during those nine months. Often God's pace is a slow pace. He allows things to develop slowly. He wants our patient waiting. He wants to let time pass for the seeds to germinate.

Our Lady knew how to do that waiting. Somehow, an image in the whole of our life. We don't know how God wants to use our life as a Christian mother, as a Christian father, as a person of the world, as an apostle with a mission to bring about fruit over time. But we do know that He wants to use also our patient waiting: day in, day out, a little thing here, a little thing there.

During all this, we find that Our Lady is a woman of silence. Our Lady says nothing. She’s aware of the great events that are taking place within her: this great mystery of the Incarnation. It’s beyond words.

It’s very appropriate that we spend time in silent adoration of the Christ Child; in silent wonder at the Motherhood of Mary.

“A woman of constant attentiveness, a woman of hope, a woman of listening,” Pope St. John Paul calls her (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Tertio millennio adveniente, Point 48, November 10, 1994). She listened to the Word of God. She “treasured all these things carefully in her heart” (Luke 2:19,51).

St. Francis de Sales says. “It is well with you when you are near the sacred Crib where the Savior of our souls teaches us so many virtues by his silence.”

Christ is silent in Bethlehem. Words are not needed. And Mary imitates that silence.

Mary, may you help me to be a person of a deeper silence, to listen to you more carefully in my heart, to churn over in my mind all the little revelations that you give to me.

As we observe the Christ Child in Bethlehem, we also observe the Mother's love for her Child.

The Buddhist scriptures have a rather beautiful description of a mother's love for her child:

They talk about the kindness of providing protection and care while the child is in the womb.
The kindness of bearing suffering during childbirth.
The kindness of forgetting all the pain once the child is born.
The kindness of eating the bitter herself and saving the sweet for the child.
The kindness of suckling the child at her breast, and nourishing and bringing up this child.
The kindness of washing away the unclean.
The kindness of always thinking of the child when it has traveled far.
The kindness of deep care and devotion.
The kindness of ultimate pity and sympathy” (Buddha, The Filial Piety Sutra).

As we look back on the year that has just ended, we can be grateful to Our Lady for all the good things she has given to us in this past year. She has helped us to be faithful one year more to our Christian vocation, to our marriage, to our family, to our apostolate, to our spiritual life.

Te Deum laudamus. We praise you, God.

It is as though Our Lady, on this feast day, encouraged by the Church, takes us by the hand and leads us forward into this new year, this new period of time, invites us to begin again with a new struggle. We begin again in the arms of Our Mother—a great way to begin. It's the way that Jesus begins.

[St. Paul] tells us, “We go with faith to the throne of grace in order to obtain mercy” (cf. Heb. 4:16).

We can say to Our Lady: Show yourself to be a Mother. Show yourself to be a Mother to me in all the ways that I need you to be my Mother: to solve this problem, to solve that problem, to show me the way forward in this particular issue, give me lights to see what I need to say to this child, or this friend, or to do this old thing. Help me to grow in holiness and apostolate during this coming year that you have given me.

The King of England, in the year 1939 at the start of the Second World War, made a speech where he said, “At Christmas, I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ He replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God, that He should be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’ I went forth and, finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night” (King George VI, Christmas Broadcast 1939, quoting “The Gate of the Year” poem by Minnie Louise Haskins).

It's a great comfort to know that we have a Mother and she's always there for us. Even if our own mother in this world may have passed on, we're never without the Mother in heaven.

She's outstanding among all the saints. She's the mirror of holiness. We find in her all the virtues. She's the model of all the virtues. She's a woman of hope. A woman of faith. She's finally a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise?

Mary, help us to grow in all of these virtues. Help us to have recourse to you, to look to you, so that you can be the Mother that we need in moments of temptation, when we need a little more strength, or a little more grace, or when we need that little touch of affection.

We can sense this in her quiet gestures. In the infancy narratives in the Gospel, we can imagine all the little details that Our Mother practices with the Child Jesus. We see her refinement, her intimacy.

We see the details with which she observes the needs of others at Cana in Galilee. “They have no wine” (John 2:3). Mary, help us to have that refinement. We see how she's always looking out for others.

She's truly become the Mother of all believers. We could think on this day of how we could take better care of our Marian piety: our Rosary, our glances at the images of Our Lady, our pilgrimages, our aspirations that we say to her.

In the Furrow, we're told: “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Teacher of unlimited self-giving. Do you remember? It was in praise of her that Jesus Christ said: ‘Whoever fulfills the Will of my Father, he—she—is my mother!’...and sister and brother (Matt. 12:50). Ask of this good Mother that her answer, with the generosity it shows, may grow stronger in your soul—with the strength of love and liberation. Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 33).

Pope St. John Paul II, in his first encyclical, On the Redeemer of Man, when he speaks about Our Lady, says, “For if we feel a special need, in this difficult and responsible phase of the history of the Church and of mankind, to turn to Christ, who is Lord of the Church and Lord of man's history on account of the mystery of the Redemption, we believe that nobody else can bring us, as Mary can, into the divine and human dimension of this mystery.

“Nobody has been brought into it by God himself as Mary has. It is in this that the exceptional character of the grace of the divine Motherhood consists. Not only is the dignity of this Motherhood unique and unrepeatable in the history of the human race, but Mary's participation, due to this Maternity, in God's plan for man's salvation through the mystery of the Redemption is also unique in profundity and range of action.”

And so, the Marian Pope goes very deep into this Maternity of Mary and what it means for each one of us and for the whole of the human race.

And so, Mary, help me to see, help me to understand, help me to appreciate in a greater way this great Maternity that God has given to us.

He says, “We can say that the mystery of the Redemption took shape beneath the heart of the Virgin of Nazareth when she pronounced her ‘fiat,’ her ‘Be it done unto me.’ From then on, under the special influence of the Holy Spirit, this heart, the heart of both a virgin and a mother, has always followed the work of her Son and has gone out to all those whom Christ has embraced and continues to embrace with inexhaustible love.

“For that reason, her heart must also have the inexhaustibility of a mother. The special characteristic of the motherly love that the Mother of God inserts into the mystery of the Redemption and the life of the Church finds expression in its exceptional closeness to man and all that happens to him” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris hominis, Point 22, March 4, 1979).

We know that there is no moment, no situation, when we need to be far away from Our Mother. Any little call and she will come running.

No matter how far we may drift, no matter how much we may have neglected God in our lives, or people around us, we can help them to rediscover this Mother.

Or if they seem unresponsive, we can ask this maternal heart of Mary: “Look out in a special way for this particular soul.” And we know that we will be heard.

“It is in this,” he continues, “that the mystery of the Mother consists. The Church, which looks to her with altogether special love and hope, wishes to make this mystery her own in an ever-deeper manner. For in this the Church also recognizes the way for her daily life, which is each person” (ibid.).

The Church invokes her under so many titles, so many titles that manifest the different aspects of her Maternity—Morning Star, Health of the Sick, Cause of Our Joy, Queen of the Angels, Mother Most Amiable, Mother Most Admirable.

We have a title for Our Mother for all the different possible situations of our life, so that under each one of these titles, we can find a special line to the heart of Mary.

Benedict XVI says, “Mary is the Mother and model of the Church, who receives the divine Word in faith and offers herself to God as the ‘good soil’ in which he can continue to accomplish his mystery of salvation” (Benedict XVI, Homily, January 1, 2012).

Mary, may we also be good soil. Convert us in this coming year to be good soil that receives the good seed. Good soil is malleable, pliable, soft, open to receive the good seed. It’s not hard or arid, dry, difficult.

Help us to be open to all the seeds you want to sow, to all the means of formation that you want to expose us to, so that you can use this very crucial period to mold our souls in a special way, to be a better apostle, a better saint, to blaze a better trail for those around us.

“The Church also participates in the mystery of divine Motherhood through preaching, which sows the seed of the Gospel,” says Pope Benedict, “throughout the world; and through the sacraments, which communicate grace and divine life to men” (ibid.).

Our Lady watches over every talk we may give, every apostolic conversation, the sowing of all of these seeds through word or through virtue, through example, through heroism, through daily fulfillment of our plan of life, or other goals that we set for ourselves. Our Lady, with her divine Motherhood, watches over all of these things, because this is all a sowing of the seed.

“The Church exercises her Motherhood, especially,” he says, “in the sacrament of Baptism, when she generates God's children from water and the Holy Spirit, who cries out in each of them: ‘Abba, Father!’ (Gal. 4:6). Like Mary, the Church is the mediator of God's blessing for the world” (ibid).

There are many things we can ask Our Mother for in this coming year: for the intentions of the Holy Father, for peace in various places, for the migrants, for the better reception of God's plan for the family, for morality in medicine, for the sacredness of every human life, for so many other great intentions that we have to work for, and plant the seed of the Gospel in the world. “Mary is the mediator of God's blessing for the world. She receives it in receiving Jesus and she transmits it in bearing Jesus” (ibid.).

The shepherds were the first to find Mary as Mother, with Jesus sitting on her lap, and also to discover her as a Mother in the same way.

“Christ is the mercy and the peace that the world, of itself, cannot give, which it needs always, at least as it needs bread” (ibid.).

We find this great mercy and peace in the arms of Mary. “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided” (Prayer, The Memorare).

There's a song from many years ago that could well be applied in its words to Our Mother:

“For all those times you stood by me, for all the truth you made me see, for all the joy you brought to my life, for all the wrong that you made right, for every dream you made come true, for all the love I found in you, I'll be forever thankful.

“You were the one who held me up; never let me fall. You were the one who saw me through it all. You were my strength when I was weak. You were my voice when I couldn't speak. You were my eyes when I couldn't see. You showed the best there was in me. Lifted me up when I couldn't reach. You gave me faith because you believed. I'm everything I am because you love me.

“You gave me wings and made me fly. You touched my hand, I could touch the sky. I lost my faith, you gave it back to me. You said no star was out of reach. You stood by me and I stood tall. I had your love, I had it all. I'm grateful for each day you gave me. Maybe I don't know that much, but I know this much is true. I was blessed because I was loved by you” (Diane Warren, Because I Loved You).

So, we turn to Mary with the Christ Child in her arms, thanking her for being Our Mother and asking her that she might always be that Mother, always being there for us and leading us forward in this coming year along the paths where God wants us to walk.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

RK