The New Year Day, World Peace Day.
First Reading: Numbers 6: 22 – 27;
Second Reading: Galatians 4: 4 – 7;
Gospel: Luke 2: 16 – 21
Since we celebrate the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, on New Year’s Day, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy and Peaceful New Year? I pray that the Lord Jesus and His Mother Mary may enrich your lives during the New Year with an abundance of God’s blessings.
Feast of Mary, the Mother of God is a very appropriate way to begin a new year. This celebration reminds us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, is also our Heavenly Mother. This is an occasion to renew our devotion to Mary, who is also Mother of the Church because she is our spiritual mother. In 1970, Pope Paul VI instituted the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God to be celebrated on January 1st. The solemnity shows the relationship of Jesus to Mary. The Church puts the feast of this solemnity on the first day of the New Year to emphasise the importance of Mary’s role in the life of Christ and of the Church. She has a special role and mission given to her by God. As Mother of our Redeemer and of the redeemed, she reigns as Queen at the side of Christ the King. She is a powerful intercessor for all of our needs here on earth.
The Church observes this day also as the World Day of Peace and invites us to pray specially for peace in the world. Today’s special Feast affirms what we Catholics believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary truly is the Mother of God. This Catholic Dogma finds its origin in a Bible passage that is found in the Gospel of Luke 1, 26-38. In the message given by the angel to Mary: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall call His Name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High…” Once Mary said yes, the Holy Spirit created in her womb the human nature that God the Son would assume. Since motherhood is of the person and not of the nature alone, and since Mary is the mother of Jesus, then she is rightly called the Mother of God. After the angel had received her consent to become the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary visited Elizabeth. At Mary’s greeting Elizabeth said, ”Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:42-43;
The Holy Scriptures teach us that Jesus was both God and man. John writes: “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14). St. Paul refers to this event when he writes to the Galatians, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman,” and as, “eternally begotten of the Father.” So Bible teaches that Mary was the mother of the God-Man Jesus, not in the sense that she gave birth to Jesus as God, but in the sense that the Baby she bore had the nature of God and the nature of Man. Today, we are starting a new day and a New Year with inner knowledge and understanding of the greatness of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. We greet each other with the same blessing as in the first reading of today: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you His Peace. May the Peace of the Lord remain within us, our families and communities and bring us the joy and happiness in the year to come. The divine name appears in the Blessing, giving them life and warmth. The graciousness of God may remain with each one of us throughout the New Year.
Let us strive to be pure and holy like our Heavenly Mother. All mothers want their children to inherit or acquire their good qualities. Our Heavenly Mother is no exception. With Joseph, she succeeded in training the Child Jesus, so that He “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon Him” (Lk 2:40); RSV2Catholic). Hence, our best way of celebrating this feast and honouring our Heavenly Mother would be to promise her that we will practice her virtues of Faith, Obedience, Purity and Loving, Humble Service, that we may become the saintly sons and daughters of our Heavenly Mother, the holy Mother of God.
We need our Heavenly Mother’s prayers to have a better physical life and spiritual life in the New Year: Let us ask for our Heavenly Mother’s help so that we may glorify God with a healthier physical and spiritual life and a better appreciation of life in a culture of death. We need a Super-Mother like Jesus’ Mother Mary to stop millions of pregnant women from killing their babies by abortion, and to encourage nations to enact and implement laws to stop homicides, physician-assisted suicides, mercy-killing and mass murders by terrorist and fanatic groups.
We need to honour Mary as the Mother of Jesus: “We honour Mary by actively participating in today’s Mass and in all the Marian feasts of the Church throughout the year. In these Masses and at other times, we give Mary hyperdulia (an honour greater than that given to the saints (dulia) and less than the adoration we offer to God), because of the gifts of grace God granted her and because of the way she responded to these gifts. We also honour her in all the forms of Marian prayer we say: The Rosary, the Angelus, the Regina Coeli, the Hail Holy Queen, the Memorarae, and so on. These are prayers we should pray so often we have them memorised. We can honour Mary by cultivating an interior life like hers. Mary meditated on, that is, thought about, the events of her life in relation to God’s plan of salvation. We are participants in God’s plan of salvation, too. We are God’s instruments and fellow workers in God’s kingdom. Everything that happens to us has a good meaning and it is up to us to try, with God’s help, to discover and appreciate it. Mary’s words at the wedding feast of Cana reveal her basic orientation, which we can apply to ourselves: ‘Do whatever He tells you.”’ We can honour Mary by praying for her intercession.”