Cycle A - Year I:  

01 January 2023: Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God 

(Liturgical Color: White)

Readings:

First Reading:        Numbers 6:22-27

Second Reading:   Galatians 4:4-7

Gospel:  Please Read  Luke 2:16-21 

A new year of journey with Mama Mary!

A HAPPY AND BLESSED NEW YEAR 2023 TO EVERYONE!  Thank You, Lord, for this day as we start another year of journey with Mama Mary to our heavenly home.

We start this year, as we start our life, under the protection of a mother, as we celebrate the most passionate and enduring of all human relationships, that of a mother and child.

Holy Mother Church opens each new year by proclaiming Mary as the Holy Mother of God and entrusting the Church and all of us to her protection. The Council of Ephesus proclaimed in June 431 that indeed Mary can rightfully be called "Mother of God".

Let us 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 o 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."

We honor Mary as 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 Jesus was lost and found in the Temple after three days, and also during the agony and death of the grown-up Jesus on the cross. But Mary's complete trust in God made her accept the role of a mother to God the Son.

St. Luke is the evangelist and he tells us about the poor shepherd who were the first witnesses of the birth of the Messiah.  After receiving the Good News from the angel about Jesus' birth, they went in haste to Bethlehem. There they found Mary and Joseph, and the infant Jesus lying in a manger, just as what the angel told them. "And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." (Lk 2:19)  

 

Mary presents to us a perfect model of being 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 was the Queen-Mother standing at the right hand of the glorified Lord, which we proclaim in the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary.

As we start a new journey of life in Year 2023 let us pray to Mary, the Holy Mother of God and our Mother, too, for protection: "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 to protect us and end this pandemic; pray to God for us always that He may reward us with Paradise when our earthly journey is done. Amen."    

I wish all my readers A Happy, Safe, and Blessed New Year 2023! And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!