Mary Mother of God

We begin our year with Mary our mother, and we celebrate her most important feast: Mary, mother of God, her divine maternity. We used to celebrate today the feast of the name of Jesus, Emmanuel. But the Church with wisdom swapped the feast, because when we have a baby, we have a mother. There is no baby without a mother. He is so defenceless, that Mary these days is the important one. We normally represent Jesus sitting on Mary’s lap, seat of wisdom, throne of glory. Baby Jesus became conscious of himself, when he realised another was looking after him. His first identity came from his mother, who gave him all the love and affection she had in her heart. She fed him with milk, kept him warm under woollen clothes, chaged his nappies, sang lullabies to put him to sleep, rocked the cradle, taught him to talk, held him whe he began to walk.

Today we celebrate this feast because nine months ago Mary said yes to God’s plans for her. It was the beginning of the incarnation, God becoming man, taking our human flesh, coming to us in the same way all of us enter this world. It was the beginning of our salvation, the work of our redemption. And all started when a young girl answered to God’s call. It reminds us of the importance of following God’s plans for us, without being afraid of their consequences. We don’t realise how God in a way, conditions his designs to our affirmative decisions.

The dogma was defined in the year 431 during the Council of Ephesus. It was necessary because some people were calling her just the mother of Jesus. But the logic is clear: if she is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, therefore she is the mother of God. Not of his divinity, but of the person of Jesus Christ. It was an important definition, because it has a lot of consequences for us. It places us close to Mary and close to Jesus. She is our mother, the mother of Jesus and my mother, the mother of all human beings. Therefore Jesus is our elder brother and we all are sons and daughters of God.

The closer we are to Mary, the closer we are to Jesus. To access Jesus as a baby, we need to go through his mother. We cannot bypass her. She is our short cut. It is a pity Protestants have some apprehension about the mother of God. The devil hates her, because he knows her power, coming directly from her Son. It was foretold at the beginning, when the serpent attacked Eve, and the coming of a new Eve was prophesied. He knows that he cannot do much against her, and tries with all his might to separate us from the help of our mother.

Saint Josemaria was very proud of his love for Mary. You could almost feel it. He used to say that if anybody wanted to imitate him, it should be his devotion to her. He wrote a strong statement about her: “We go to Jesus, and we return to him, through Mary.” Once somebody asked him if he would write this again, thinking that it was a bit too strong, and it could be criticised by people who didn’t share his love for her. Saint Josemaria said yes, defending what he had written, but then he stopped, thought for a moment and said: “I would write now: Mary, the only way.”

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Holy Family

Once we have a baby, we have a family. The Church uses three different Gospels for this feast day, the presentation and finding of the child Jesus in the temple, and today the flight to Egypt. In them we see the Holy Family together in three very different settings, today flying away from Herod who wants to kill the baby. We see Joseph sleeping peacefully, after the coming of the three wise men. Pope Francis has a lot of devotion to the sleeping Joseph. He’s got a statue of him on his desk. Joseph is peacefully dreaming about what to do with the gold left by the Magi, either to buy a faster donkey or to refurbish the old kitchen at home. It wasn’t to be; the gold is for the trip. He can still do with the old donkey.

We are getting used to the angel appearing to Joseph in his dreams. We are also normally used to seeing Joseph getting up in the middle of the night, taking the mother and the child and running away from Herod’s soldiers. But let us take for one moment the place of Joseph. If an angel of the Lord appears to me in a dream and asks me the same as Joseph, my first reaction when I wake up would be of rebellion: that was a nightmare! Or maybe it is the devil. My second reaction would be to challenge God: Why do we have to move? Can you get rid of Herod? Is this baby truly the Son of God? But of course, Joseph is not me, and did what God wanted him to do, without complaining, without asking questions, waking up straight away, without waiting for the morning to say good bye to the people in Nazareth, just in case Herod’s soldiers were at the door.

The Holy Family went to Egypt to fulfill the Scripture. But it could have been written differently. There are places in Egypt that today still hold the tradition of the passing of Jesus through their land. Joseph gives us an example of docility and trusting in God’s will. We all have the experience of many things that happen to us that we don’t like, that we don’t understand, that we complain about. We rebel and we ask: Why me? The question should be: Why not me? Some things we’ll understand later on; other things we need to wait till eternity. We should be patient. Eventually everything will make sense.

Again we are used to seeing the flight to Egypt in traditional paintings as something beautiful and romantic. It wasn’t like that. They didn’t book a flight on the internet. It was hard, in the middle of the night, looking back to see if they were followed, going to a new country with a different language, with hieroglyphic handwriting, as refugees. Joseph had to begin again, find a job, build a new house, make new friends. They even didn’t know how long they had to be there.

After few years of hard work, the Holy Family were settled. They built a beautiful house, Joseph had plenty of work and Mary made good friends. Jesus began to talk with an Egyptian accent. Joseph was again dreaming about a well deserved holiday at the beach, at the mouth of the Nile, when again an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him to go back home. And he went back without complaining. Then he spent his years surrounded by the most amazing treasures you can have in your life: Jesus and Mary. God’s plans for us are always the best for us. When we get older we realise that he knows best. And the opposite; when we do our own thing, things go wrong and we get frustrated. Joseph died accompanied by his two greatest loves. Let us follow in Joseph footsteps.

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Christmas

During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.

Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.

And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?

And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.

But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.

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