Today, we have a chance to go to Bethlehem again, following the shepherds, to keep a second, 8th day Christmas.
Today, eight days after birth, our Lord is circumcised, enlisted in the army of Abraham, and he’s given the name of Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus – to begin not a conquest of land, but a campaign of universal salvation.
Today, we are blessed with the blessing of Aaron, but with the name of Jesus placed upon us.
Today, – it’s on the title page, it’s what’s most prominent – we “hail the holy Mother who gave birth to the King, who rules heaven and earth. Following the Council of Ephesus of 431 AD, we affirm the divine sonship of Jesus by calling Mary Mother of God, Theotokos in Greek, bearer of God. So delighted were the people when this was declared that they accompanied the bishops back to their lodgings that night carrying torches and chanting Holy Mary Theotokos! This doesn’t mean – we always say this – that Mary came before God and mothered the deity. But today’s 2nd reading says: “In the fulness of time, God [i.e. the Father] sent his son born of a woman.” Mary was that woman. Mary was the mother of God’s Son made human. And God’s Son is “God from God”. Therefore we can call her Mother of God. Her Jesus is God in person, now, thanks to her, human too, and mothers are mothers of persons, of the whole, not of parts. By calling her Mother of God we affirm our faith in Jesus, God with us. And so, not just in Bethlehem but through the centuries, Mary upholds the truth of her Son and the fulness of salvation in him. “Hail, holy Mother!”.
What a beautiful way to begin a calendar year!
It gets better too. Being Christ’s mother, she’s ours too. In a monastery in France there’s a beautiful ceramic of Mary wearing a wide mantle and sheltering under it all sorts of people, men and women, young and old, healthy and sick; there are lay people, monks and nuns, even a bishop. A monk pointed him out to me once, saying Take courage. Today, as another year begins, here’s Mary eager to mantle us, to keep us in all our variety one in her Son. This isn’t to infantilise us, to have us cowering and hiding but to give us the trust we need to live, a harbour to sail from into the wind and a home to return to, our work done. And we know she accompanies us too, as she went with her son to the end and stands beside him now.
So, today it makes theological, spiritual sense to entrust ourselves again today to Mary’s motherhood, to ask her to mantle us so we aren’t, as St Paul fears we might be, “children, tossed to and for by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…but grow up in every way into him who is the head” (Eph 4:14, 15). Today’s Collect speaks of her “fruitful virginity” – a paradox. Her virginity is her total belonging to Christ, her holiness; her fruitfulness is us, the community of believers whose faith is the fruit of her prayer. The two go together: holiness and growth, purity and love. And we ask “to experience her intercession”, to see it, know it, feel it. When I became bishop here 15 years ago on the feast of her Assumption, I entrusted the diocese to her and my own ministry as bishop, and I still do. Let’s all entrust ourselves, our families, our parishes, our work and service to her. Let’s put the whole world in her hands!
And here’s an encouragement as the year begins. Like Mary, the Church is a mother too. And how does Mother Church most mother us, mature us as fruit-bearing souls, form us as disciples of Christ, unite us as a Christian community? Well, she has a school, a university no less. She has a pedagogy. She offers a course. It is the Liturgy. It’s all that comes to us within the framework of the liturgical year: the word of God, sacraments, seasons, feasts and fasts, the cycles of Advent and Christmas, of Lent and Easter and Ordinary Time, the sequence of saints. The Liturgy is a culture that cultivates our faith. It’s an eco-system filling our daily lives with the oxygen of the Holy Spirit. It guides our prayer. It keeps us one and directed to heaven. Its heart is the Mass. It’s the best life-support we have. Let’s not be distracted from it or so overwhelmed by work we lose the connection. Let’s make it a priority this year. Let’s be regular in worship, on Sundays especially. Liturgy carries us. It takes us through the whole life of Christ, from his conception to his glory, and he will live and die and rise in us and we in him. We won’t have a barren life and Mary’s motherhood will be fulfilled in us. Let’s follow him!
