THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY

In the Roman Catholic Lectionary, the texts for today provide inspiration to conclude the Octave of Christmas by returning us to Jesus birth and the account from the Gospel of Luke of how Mary holds all the miraculous events in her heart. The blessings which are with humanity in the person of Jesus, with the name meaning “God saves”, are the realization of the prayer and exhortation of the passage from the Book of Numbers where God chooses to be present in a special way to the Israelites. They will be the witness to all people of the Covenant which the Divine is with humanity. Paul declares to the Galatians that Jesus is with us to be the Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, who will call us to our relationship as children of God through our brotherhood with Jesus. In this relationship, we are free to address God as “Abba” or as we say in western culture “daddy”. It is the intimacy to which we are invited which is in a paradoxical way both elementarily simple as in the response of Mary to treasure these things in her heart and the seed of much reflection and inspiration which we see in a way in the number of citations which curator DonSchwager has gathered in his short article on Luke’s account of the birth of the Messiah. We begin the new calendar year in the great joy of our inclusion in the family of Jesus and the Great Graciousness which is a relationship of intimacy with the Divine which is modeled in the person of Mary. We pray to be free to live as Mary who “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. “(Luke 2.19)