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The Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
| | Readings for January 1, 2012
As I journeyed from the Protestant Evangelicalism of my upbringing to the Catholicism that has become the faith tradition of my adult life, I had to learn the meaning of the various Marian feasts. They were foreign to my theology and had not been part of my faith because Protestants don't spend much time on Mary. One of the first Marian teachings I embraced is celebrated in today's solemnity, Mary, Mother of God.
At the third ecumenical council, in the fifth century of Christianity before the Christian church divided into the Eastern and Protestant branches, Mary was given this title, which is Theotokos in Greek: Birth-Giver to God. It was an affirmation of the unity of the divine and the human in the one person of Christ in the midst of disagreement among the bishops, some of whom thought Mary's title should be limited to Mother of Christ. Declaring Mary to be the Mother of God did not mean that she was eternal like God. It meant, rather, that the Incarnation was complete. In the one person Jesus, the fully divine God was born among us fully human - "was incarnate of the Virgin Mary" as we now say in the creed.
These are things to ponder in our heart, as did Mary in today's Gospel. They are mysteries of our faith which are perhaps given little thought in the twenty-first century. But when I hear her title, Mary, Mother of God, I hear my own human nature called to completion in God. This call sounded over the hills of Bethlehem when the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It resounds in the epistle today as one crying "Abba, Father!" For the Incarnation provides the way back to God, back to familial relationship with our Creator as daughters and sons and inheritors of the divine.
And so, with Mary, in the quietness of the first day of this new year, we open our hearts to the Child. What will this year bring? What will we encounter this year as we journey on? We don't know. But we can pray with Aaron:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you.
May the Lord look upon you kindly
and give you peace.
Daniel Cochrane is a special education teacher and technology specilaist. He sings in the Ascension Choir and assists with the RCIA process in our parish.
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| Lectio Divina... | | "Lectio divina is a slow, contemplative praying of the Scriptures. Time set aside in a special way for lectio divina enables us to discover in our daily life an underlying spiritual rhythm. Within this rhythm, we discover an increasing ability to offer more of ourselves and our relationships to the Father, and to accept the embrace that God is continuously extending to us in the person of his son, Jesus Christ."
Father Luke Dysinger, O.S.B
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| About Living the Word | |
LIVING THE WORD...opportunity, challenge, commitment
Opportunity: Living the Word is an opportunity for us to grow in our knowledge and love of God through the prayerful reading and study of the scriptures.
Challenge: Living the Word is a challenge to make more time for God in our daily lives. We challenge ourselves to come to Mass each week ready to hear God's Word proclaimed and to take that Word to the world!
Commitment: Living the Word invites us to commit ourselves to spending time with God's Word several times each week. As we read and reread these scriptures, think about the words we read, and bring these words to prayer, we encounter Christ, God's Living Word.
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| What is a Lectionary? | |
A lectionary is a list of scripture readings (also called "lections," from the Latin lectio) selected for reading at worship services; it is also the book containing the actual readings. The term is most commonly used in the Catholic Church for the Lectionary for Mass, which contains the readings prescribed for the Masses for Sundays, feast days, weekdays, sacramental celebrations, funerals, and Masses for special occasions or particular devotions-basically, any Mass.
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