Solemnity of the Mother of God

In my opinion, one of the biggest blessings of being a Catholic is the liturgy. Catholic liturgy is not only a collection of symbolic gestures, the reenactment of a divine drama or a mere aesthetic experience. In the liturgy, two things happen: 1) the mystery of our salvation that is being celebrated is made present again, today; and 2) we are being included, with our present lives and circumstances, in this same mystery. Both things are fundamental. We are celebrating today the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We heard in the Gospel the narrative of Jesus’ circumcision and the adoration of the shepherds. As Catholics, we believe that these facts helped to form the pathway for our salvation. The way Jesus was born, lived
and died has something very important for every Christian, for every human being to learn. 

We listen to these narratives as part of our history, as something which concerns us, today. Who Christ was? What did he do? How do we understand his life? And the second point is our participation in all that. Sometimes, we might think: the Bible is full of magical stories, but my own life is very trite; in the Bible, God speaks to the saints and work miracles, but in my life, in my reality, and in the whole world what we see is a succession of dull, prosaic days, where God lives in silence and seems absent-minded, not interested in my personal concerns. But that is not true.

For every miracle and wonder written in the Bible, there were many more days where nothing seemed to happen – just as in our present lives; and if it is true that most of our days are uneventful enough, we all have had moments when God’s grace was tangible, almost concrete, incarnate in our lives. Life, as portrayed in the Bible, is not that different from our present life. And we can see that in today’s second reading: “God sent his Son, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons”. 

The Son of God was born, as we heard in the Gospel, because God wanted us to become His sons as well, as we heard in St Paul’s epistle. This is awesome! St Paul is saying that God wanted to experience our life in order to include us in His. God wanted to experience our challenges, our difficulties, our boredom, so that we could experience the holiness behind, underneath all our reality. St Paul says that we are no longer slaves, no longer sinful wretched creatures, but sons, heirs – this is a complete turnover. Our life has a dignity, despite its challenges; our life has meaning, despite our weaknesses; our life is eternal, despite the evil which sometimes seems to prevail in our world.

Our life, our whole life, is a blessing. And that is why in the first reading, on this very first day of this new year, the liturgy proclaims one of the most beautiful blessings of the whole Scripture: “The LORD bless you and keep you! The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!” And all these blessings come into our life through the liturgy and the sacraments, which are the life of Christ being born in our lives every time that we gather together to celebrate his paschal mystery. May this blessing accompany each one of us every single day of our lives, transforming 2025 in a very happy New Year, indeed.