Homily for the Solemnity of Mary. Mother of God

In the early centuries of the Church, there was much our forefathers struggled with understanding.  Who was Jesus of Nazareth?  Describing who He is defied any conventional understandings as so much of who He is is not confined to any knowledge of time and space as we know it.  Some believed that He was only God and not actually a human being.  Some believed He was only a man and not God.  Some believed that He was both but that one nature edged out the other.  It became necessary for the Church to call for gatherings of the bishops to hammer these things out because the answer to these questions radically changed belief.  The meetings are called ecumenical councils, starting with Nicea in the year 325.  In 431, the bishops met at the city of Ephesus.  One of the pronouncements that came out was what is called the Theotokos...that is, that Mary is the Mother of God...the God bearer.

The Council fathers didn't mean that Mary somehow gave birth to the Trinity or existed before the Trinity as a mother predates the existence of her child.  The teaching of Theotokos, which we celebrate at the end of the 8 days that make up the Octave of Christmas, speaks to her son.  The teaching is that Jesus is fully God and fully man, in being and nature.  All of this is united in the person of Jesus Christ, born into this world through the obedience of the Virgin Mary.

In this solemnity, we give thanks to God for the obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary to His will. Her becoming the Theotokos was a result not of God's force, but of her obedience to God's love. Being the Theotokos, she is the first disciple, the first apostle, and the first evangelist. Her obedience makes possible the forward progression of God's salvific plan for humanity. This feast which bookends the celebration of Jesus' humanity in the Incarnation with the celebration of His divinity has much to teach us.

The feasts of the Church are more than beautiful portraits on the wall of the museum for us delight in their beauty.  No, they always tell us something of what God expects of us. In the Gospel, we again hear of the first hearers of the Incarnation, the shepherds;  a group that desperately needed  this proclamation of the Incarnation and the attendant salvation brought through it. They go and tell Mary and Joseph what they have seen and heard. What happens to these shepherds after this event , we do not know. However, even this points to the essential charism of the Church.

The obedience of Mary to God's will, an obedience that made her the Theotokos, is to modeled in out own life.  Though we do not do it in the identical way Our Blessed Mother did, we are called by virtue of our baptism to be a theotokos ourselves.  In our own obedience to God's will, we are able to bear God to those, who like the shepherds, dwell in the darkness of sin and unbelief.  It once again reminds us of the evangelical call of the Church to go make disciples of the nations; something that will once again be driven home in the coming Solemnity of the Epiphany.  This evangelization is core to the purpose of the Church; we are called to be a theotokos to others until Christ comes again.

Be clear, though, that it is by God's grace that we are a theotokos; we must have the sanctifying grace of God within us to bear Him.  Disobedience to God's will through sin damages, obscures, or even evicts that presence of God; we cannot be a theotokos and a bearer of sin at the same time.  We must choose. As we come into this new year, let us ask God for the grace to be a theotokos and for the grace to defend against anything that would harm such a call. As Mary is, we are called to be.  Let us not turn from such a divine calling, but embrace it with the totality of who we are.