MOTHERHOOD OF MARY

Introduction: Today we have the chance to begin a new year by resolving, like Mary, to say ‘yes’ to God’s plan for our lives and willingly embracing all that he has for us. When Mary heard the shepherds reporting what the angel had told them about her Child, she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (vs. 19). This is what God wants us to do as we ponder the events of Christ’s birth in this season. We can ask Mary to join her prayers to ours, so that we may come to know her Son more fully. She always points to Jesus, and rejoices if we come to a deeper faith in him and experience of his blessings. As we prepare to enter a new year, we ask her prayers to help us imitate her love for her Son and her submission to God’s will in all things.

The Homily
There is a particular virtue that is asked of every woman carrying a child in her womb, and that virtue is trust. Acceptance of pregnancy involves a submission to a life process that is not within her control. Acceptance means a yielding of self beyond one’s conscious control. For Mary, it meant accepting in advance every detail of God’s purpose for the coming into this world of his own Son.  The secret she carried within her heart was inseparable from the life she carried within her womb. Mary had to trust God for all the details of the gestation of her precious Child. She trusted God to deal with the anxieties of Joseph. She trusted God to deal with the place and circumstances of the birth of the Child. What kind of setting would be appropriate for the “Son of the most High?”  She trusted God when she and Joseph were turned away from the inn. “And she gave birth to her first born Son and wrapped him in swaddled cloths, and laid him in a manger” (Luke 2,7). And by so doing she introduced her Son into the pell mell of humanity, into human affairs, into a family, into this world of births, illness, pain and death; this world of employment and hard work, buying and selling, of housing and of those displaced and on run from oppression, and most of all, she introduced him to poverty. Mary’s Motherhood has made it easy for all of us to look for the Son of God in every situation of our human life, especially those of poverty and self-dispossession.
Mary must have sensed from the circumstances of Jesus’ birth that his life would not follow the pattern for earthly kings, and hers would not follow the pattern of earthly queen mothers.
There is a perfect working together between the Holy Spirit and Mary, though it was not an equal partnership. But everything that a mother contributes, Mary contributed perfectly. The baby Jesus received his genetic code from her. The Child Jesus acquired character traits and personality formation from Mary and Joseph, but especially from Mary. As a baby learns to relate to another first from the mother, so Jesus learned from Mary how to relate to others. The ways of mother-baby relationship, breast-feeding, cuddles and kisses, gestures of affection, smiles and protective action, all these were under the leading and guidance of God’s Spirit. Her Son was the Holy One of God. His humanity had to be aligned in perfect harmony with the holiness of his Godhead.
This relationship begins in the time of Mary’s pregnancy and continues throughout the infancy, childhood and adolescence of Jesus. Jesus must surely have honoured his Mother in an exemplary way. An extraordinary love and affinity must have existed between Son and Mother, the fruit of a sinless, grace-filled relationship. Let the Jesus-Mary relationship be our guide, and keep us afloat as we launch into the stream of the New Year 2006.
Jesus is Mary’s only Son, but her spiritual Motherhood extends to all men and women whom he came to save, for Jesus is the “first-born among many brethren.” Think on the Gospel of St. John, chapter 19: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your Mother’” (19, 26-27). There is something much more here than Mary’s home and housing arrangements after the death of her Son. The gospel chapter ends with the line, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own” (John 19,27). The disciple whom Jesus loved was the representative of all the disciples. Like John, the disciples of Jesus take Mary into their own, into their own hearts, into their own lives. Just as Eve was the mother of all the living, so Mary is the Mother of all those who live by the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER: Loving God, calling your friends in new and unexpected ways, choosing Mary from the powerless and unnoticed in the world, yet greatly loved and cherished in your sight, that she should be the Mother of our Saviour, Jesus; so fill us with your grace that we too may accept the promptings of your Spirit, and welcome your angel with glad and open hearts, ready to be pierced with pain and filled with joy, rejoicing in the cost of your salvation, in and through the same Jesus our Messiah.


Prayer for mothers:
Thank you, God, that you are as tender as a mother,
as well as strong as a father.
You give us life, and care for us like a mother who will not forsake her children.
We pray for our mothers today, putting them into your hands for time and for eternity; and we ask your blessing on all our relationships,
in the families of our homes, our churches, and our communities.