OMELIE / Omelie EN

01 gen 2023

01/01/2023 - Mary, Mother of God

01/01/2023 - Mary, Mother of God

Reading 1 NUM 6,22-27 Psalm 66 Reading 2 GAL 4,4-7 Gospel LK 2,16-21

Today is full of messages! Today we exchange the wishes, or better, the blessing for the new year, which we would like to be for ourselves and everyone a happy and serene time. And this is why today we celebrate the Day for Peace: whoever is having a speech nowadays, heads of state or heads of religion, cannot skip this topic, and they try to give answers and advice to the whole world, to satisfy the desire shared by everyone to avoid the possibility and the causes of conflict, which sadly continue to make families, nations, peoples and continents suffer.

The liturgy of the Church also celebrates a particularly solemnity, consequence and completion of the mystery we live during this time.

The Son of God was made flesh, is among us. He is introduced to us by a Mother. She is not the one saving us, bit she is the one handing us the Saviour. God has made use of her to give us Jesus! And she is not some shop assistant taking something from a shelf to give it to us, she is a Mother! God has lowered Himself to the point of asking for her availability, and has put in her the new life who becomes the Life, the Way and the Truth for us all. She is the Mother of the Life, the Way and the Truth: why not to say simply Mother of God? The one born from her is “called the Son of the Most High”, and He will apply to Himself the “I am” which is God’s name; so she is correctly called Mother of God! This title is not pride of her, because is a title given her in the service of the knowledge true and full of her Son!

Mary lives her maternity in silence. The gospel is showing her like that. Her silence is joyful listening of the Word she is holding, the Word that has come to completion in her when she had been visited by the angel, and has filled all her life, has changed it and made it precious for the whole world. “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart”: Mary’s silence is rich, full, mystery.

Everything she heard and saw was a reference to her Son, who she knew was the Son of God. Everything for her was a good occasion to contemplate and pray.

We were there too, in Mary’s prayers: not because she was thinking of us, - in fact her mind was all occupied by that Son who needed her hands and her eyes and her ears, - but because that maternity has still bearing on our life.

We enjoy her maternity, we feel immersed in it and enriched by it. Every solitude of ours is consoled and filled by her, her tenderness, like Jesus’ solitude. Every uncertainty of ours is transformed into serenity by her sweetness, like Joseph’s uncertainty. Every doubt of ours is dispelled by her sure eye, like the shepherds’ doubts.

Her lips were saying the name, Jesus, because that is what the angel had told her: “You will call Him Jesus”! and certainly nobody was tired of hearing that name said by her voice, not the shepherds not Joseph, not even the angels themselves who were watching the Child, because the heavens had come down to earth.

Let us start the new year by listening to the name of the child said by Mary’s lips. We will try today, more than once, to add our voice to hers. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! It is a strong and good way to start this part of our life, invoking, praising, loving, adoring and listening to the name of Jesus. It is a name which does not allow us to be as usual, because it has God’s strength inside, the strength of God’s love!