1st January 2022
At Christmas, Mary adores. She is, of course, fascinated by the Child she holds in her arms and feeds with her breasts. He is fully hers, but in a sense He does not belong to her. He comes from beyond her reach; from a region she connects with only through faith. He comes from God, not only because He has been sent by God into the world, but in the sense that God is His origin and His abode. He comes from God as someone who is in God; who is God. He comes from the Father who is His absolute origin. He is in the Father; He proceeds from the Father and He abides in Him. He comes from Him and He is orientated towards Him.
Mary adores her son who is so fully, so uniquely Son, and who makes her, in turn, so uniquely Mother. The Mother of God draws us into her adoration of Jesus. She kindly entrusts her Babe to our believing hearts. Thus we learn adoration which is the orientation of our whole being towards God. We express this by bowing down, by kneeling, even by prostrating our body. When, like the shepherds, you see Jesus in the manger, when you welcome Him by faith in your heart, you feel overwhelmed by a reality you cannot master at all, to which you have to surrender totally, as one surrenders to pure love. In the very moment you lower yourself to acknowledge the infinite grandeur of God, you feel a divine hand which kindly raises you up. Adoration does not make you a slave; it frees you because at long last you are given to meet with the God you have been created to meet with, to be loved by, to know and to love. According to tradition, the highest angels are sheer adoration. We join with them as much as we can. We join with Mary, queen of the angels, the first of those who adore the Father “in Spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23).
Mary’s soul lives in a constant adoration of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. This adoration is the background of all that she does. On the eighth day of Christmas, Mary offers her Son. By the rite of circumcision, he becomes a full member of the Jewish people, heir to the rights and duties agreed upon in the covenant between Israel and God. He now has a name and an identity. He is called Jesus and this name expresses the content of His mission: He will “save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).
The name Jesus is not a new name. Although it is not present in Christ’s ancestry, it can be found in the Bible. Jesus is a sort of Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua which means: ‘God saves’. Joseph and Mary give to their child the name they have both received from an angel. By consenting to this name, they consent to the mission it involves, too. Through this little child, God will effect a greater salvation than with the first Joshua, the successor of Moses. From the start, Jesus is consecrated, set apart for this mission. He belongs to this mission, entrusted to Him by His Father in heaven, more than He belongs to His human parents. The blood which goes out as a consequence of the painful operation of circumcision already evokes the blood of the new and eternal covenant which Jesus will pour out for us and for many on the Cross. The sacrifice of the Cross effects our redemption because it is the perfect act of adoration and worship that reconciles the world with its Creator.
Mary’s heart is attentive to the mysteries hidden in all the details of Her son’s life. She keeps all of them in her heart. By the working of the Holy Spirit, they come to be understood as signs and sacraments. They manifest God’s merciful design. They reveal God at work for our salvation from the very beginning of the life of Jesus – a theme we also find in the Feast of the Holy Innocents we celebrated a few days ago. They communicate the grace of salvation to all who believe.
In her faith, Mary lives a constant Annunciation. She renews the Yes she said once for all to the Angel Gabriel at Nazareth each time the mystery of her Son appears to her in a new light. That is why I said earlier that she offers her Son today. Because Jesus is offered by the Father as a covenant – and a sacrifice of covenant – for the people of Israel and for the new people of God, the Church, Mary can but consent with her whole soul to this divine offering. She, too, gives us her Son to be our Saviour and, in the same gesture, she gives herself totally to God’s plan of salvation as a humble handmaid of the Lord. She moves from adoration to sacrifice, as we are invited to do at each Mass.
As we join with the Heart of Mary in meditating on this scene at the beginning of a New Year, we try to join in Mary’s adoration and in Mary’s offering. We, too, are invited to adore God and His merciful designs for the world. We, too, are called to join freely in Christ’s sacrifice by offering ourselves as a ‘living sacrifice to God’ (Rom 12:1). The Church and the world need our constant adoration. They need places of constant worship such as this monastery, because only in genuine adoration do we find the freedom to overcome our natural love of ourselves and to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength, to love with Jesus and in Jesus. A monastery – but also a praying family, a consecrated heart – are wellsprings of life for the Church and the world.
This is what we ask of Our Lady, the Mother of God: that our monastery, that each of our hearts be ever more a temple where God is adored, the sacrifice of Christ is offered, mercy is bestowed on sinners, and peace and life are given to the world.