Readings: Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16:21
Theme: ‘The heart of a Mother is God’s loveliest masterpiece’ (St Thérèse of Lisieux)
(1st January 2025)
I’m sure most of you have seen the 1982 the popular movie, E.T. It’s about a young boy, named Elliott, who befriends a stranded alien creature and hides him in his home in California. Its producer and Director, Stephen Spielberg, was once asked why he chose to make E.T. rather ugly instead of cute.  He replied that he wanted to devise a creature only a mother could love’. This tells us a lot about mothers and their love for their children. They are invariably seen as the embodiment of that total and unconditional love which is God’s way of being. The great English novelist, William Thackeray, wrote that ‘Mother is the name for God on the lips and in the hearts of little children’. For St Thérèse of Lisieux ‘the heart of a mother is God’s loveliest masterpiece’.
Today we honour the most famous mother who ever lived: Mary, the mother of the incarnate Son of God – the Mother of God. Mary was probably just a teenager when she received and accepted God’s invitation, through the angel Gabriel, to become the mother of his Son. In the words of the Second Advent Preface, she carried him ‘in her womb with love beyond all telling’. She gave birth to him in a stable. In the family home in Nazareth, she nursed him, taught him how to walk and talk, to read and write. With the help of her husband, Joseph, she reared him from infancy to manhood. When she could not understand some of the things he said and did, she ‘pondered them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19). Jesus lived with her for 30 years, in other words, for most of his life. We are told by St Luke that, during this time, Jesus ‘increased in wisdom and stature and favour before God and people’ (Lk 2:52). When the time came for her Son to leave home, she let him go. And, when her Son made the supreme sacrifice of his life on Calvary, she stood in silence beneath the Cross as he lay dying in unspeakable agony.
Mary’s role as Mother began the moment she said ‘yes’ to God’s Word. Her response to the Angel, ‘May it be done to me according to thy word’ (Lk 1:38) was the perfect response of obedience to God. It established Mary as the new Eve, the mother of all those born again through Christ. The poet, Denise Levertov, highlights another important quality of Mary’s yes that we sometimes overlook – courage:
‘We are told of meek obedience. No one mentions …
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
infinite weight of lightness; to carry
in hidden finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power-
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Mary is the mother of God’s Son, and she is our mother too. As he lay dying on the Cross, Jesus gave Mary to the Church. It is no surprise that she was with the Apostles when the Church was born on the day of Pentecost. She continues to mother our growth in Christ. In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘She mothers each new grace that does now reach our race’. Mary’s work is not finished. She continues, as Hopkins reminds us, to let God’s glory shine through our humanity …
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.’ Â
As we enter another year in a broken world, immersed ‘in the shadow of darkness’ (Is 9:2) and lurching from crisis to crisis, we surely need the embrace of Mary’s loving care. In the words of Pope Francis, ‘We need her maternal gaze: the gaze that frees us from being orphans; the gaze that reminds us that we are brothers and sisters, that I belong to you, that you belong to me, that we are of the same flesh; her gaze that teaches us that we have to learn how to care for life in the same way and with the same tenderness that she did – by sowing hope, by sowing a sense of belonging and of fraternity’.
We need the reassurance of Mary’s healing touch to release us from our fears of an uncertain future and awaken us again to God’s vision of a world fashioned in the image of his incarnate Son: a more just and equal world; a world free from the cancers of war, aggression and hate; a world where the dignity and equality of all God’s children is respected; a world in which the threat of catastrophic climate change is replaced by respect and care for the gift of creation; a world where the ‘shalom’ of Christ reigns. And we need the courage of Mary to continue striving with all our hearts to create such a world. So, on this first day of a New Year, let us entrust ourselves to Mary’s motherly love. Let us strive to imitate her response to God’s Word in the circumstances of our own time and may the peace of Christ reign in our hearts and transform our lives.