Cycle C - Year II:

1 January 2016: Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
(Liturgical color: White)

Gospel: Read  Luke 2:16-21


We begin a new journey with Mary, Mother of God.....

With great joy, I greet everyone "A Happy and Prosperous New Year 2016!"

New Year fills our heart with new hope, inspiring us to reach out to new opportunities, and celebrate anew the most precious gift of life. It is like a re-birth in a way, a chance to re-make our dreams and our life.

Our Holy Mother Church opens the new calendar year by proclaiming Mary as "Mother of God". It is a holy day of obligation for the Catholic faithful, meaning we all go to Mass like in a Sunday.

A brief backgrounder on this particular title of Mary. It was the Council of Ephesus which affirmed in June 431 that Mary can rightfully be called "Mother of God."

Let us reflect on this title of our Blessed Mother.

Since Mary is the mother of Jesus, it must be concluded that she is also the Mother of God.  We can affirm this fact by logical syllogism: "If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and if Jesus is God, then Mary is the Mother of God."

However, it is important to clarify that "although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son's divinity, for she is neither. Rather, we say that she is the Mother of God in the sense that she carried in her womb a divine person -- Jesus Christ, God in the flesh -- and in the sense that she contributed the generic matter to the human form God took in Jesus Christ." (from Catholic Answers@www.catholic.com)

So today we honor Mary, Mother of God, for her courage, faith, devotion and humility. Like all other mothers, Mary must have felt afraid at certain moments in her maternal role, like when the child Jesus was lost and found in the Temple after three days, and also during the agony and death of the grown-up Jesus. But Mary's complete trust in God made her accept the role of a mother to God the Son.

In the Gospel narrative from St. Luke, we hear about the poor shepherds who were the first witnesses of the birth of the Messiah. They went in haste to Bethlehem after receiving the Good News from the angel. There they found Mary and Joseph, and the infant Jesus laying in a manger, just as the angel told them.

St. Luke mentioned, perhaps on purpose, that "Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." Lk 2:19) Because itt speaks of Mary's humility and complete obedience to God's will.

Thus, Mary is our perfect model of an ideal believer, for she hears the Good News, ponders it in her heart, and then fully responds to it. So that her heart becomes the place of discovering Jesus, and who He truly is. It is in this aspect of Mary's motherhood that is most important as we begin a New Year, another year in which we continue our own journey of the heart towards God.

Mary shows us how to be a christian and disciple of Jesus. She was the joy-filled mother of the new born Jesus; she was the mother of sorrow cradling her lifeless Son in the "Pieta"; and she is the Queen-Mother standing at the right hand of the glorified Lord, which we proclaim in the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary.

So, therefore, as we begin a new journey in the Year 2016 let us pray to Mary, Mother of God and our Mother too:

"O Blessed Virgin, pray to God for us always, that He may pardon and give us grace; pray to God for us always, that He may grant us peace in this life; pray to God for us always, that He may reward us with paradise at our death. Amen."

A Blessed and Prosperous New Year 2016 to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!