Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily Jan. 1.
Every year on New Year’s we gather to celebrate the feast of Mary the Mother of God, which is also at the same time the World Day of Prayer for Peace, which is appropriate, because Mary is, of course, the mother of Jesus who is the Prince of Peace as well as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
Every Marian feast that we celebrate is for the purpose of affirming some truth about Jesus and today’s feast is no exception. In the early Church there were many debates about how to understand the divinity of Jesus. One question was whether Jesus is God in an absolute sense or merely “divine,” sharing many of the attributes of God.
This was answered at the Council of Nicaea which enshrined in the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity our belief that Jesus is God in an absolute sense. Another question was whether Jesus was always God or whether he became God a) through adoption at the time of his baptism in the Jordan when the voice from heaven declared “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” or b) as a reward for his faithfulness, winning a throne in heaven by defeating Satan.
Remember that the Romans believed that Julius Caesar had become a god upon his death and Augustus and his successors began to be considered gods upon becoming emperor. Soon the title “Divine” (“Divus”) preceded the names of all Roman emperors.
So the idea of a human becoming a god was well known in the ancient world and it was natural for converts from paganism to misunderstand Jesus’ divinity in that way. That is the error that the Council of Ephesus corrected by declaring Mary to be the Mother of God: Jesus was always God and therefore already God prior to being conceived by Mary, which makes her Mother of God in that sense. She was not Mother of God before all time — she is a creature created by God — but she is the mother of Jesus who was always and remained God even as he took on human flesh in her womb.
There are a number of ways in which this is important for us, but I’d like to draw your attention today to what Pope Francis means when he calls Mary “the mother of evangelization”?at the end of his recent, marvelous apostolic exhortation?“Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”).
You recall that as he died on the cross, Jesus gave us his mother to be our mother, making her not only Mother of God but also your mother and mine. He looked down at Mary and the apostle John, and said “Woman, this is your son” and to John “this is your mother.”
Only after doing that could Jesus finally feel that he had finished his task, saying: “It is complete.” At the foot of the cross, at the moment which sealed the new covenant of grace and gave birth to the new creation, Jesus entrusts us to Mary because he does not want us to go forward from that moment without a mother.
As we gather today and as we look back over all the joys and troubles of 2013, I hope you recall that you did not journey these 365 days alone. Your mother was there with you. Jesus was too —they make a great team. But there is no substitute for a mother’s love, especially when you are frightened and feel overwhelmed. Who knows what 2014 will bring, but one thing is certain: you will not journey alone.
