On Wednesday, Jan. 1, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, a holy day of obligation for Catholics.
The Gospels usually call Mary “the mother of Jesus,” but when Mary greeted her cousin Elizabeth after conceiving Jesus, Elizabeth cried out: “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
This was the first use of the title “mother of the Lord” or its equivalent, “mother of God.” (Out of respect, the Jews always substituted God’s title, “Lord,” for his name.) However, it continued to be used.
It went unchallenged until the fifth century, when Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople began to argue that Mary had given birth to Christ’s human nature, but not his divine nature. However, St. Cyril of Alexandria noted that a mother gives birth to a person, not a nature, and that Christ is one person, although he has two natures.
Finally, at the Council of Ephesus in 431, under Pope Celestine I, the Church declared Mary to be “the mother of God because God the Word took flesh and became man and from his very conception united to himself the body he took from her.”
Mary did not originate God, but she “mothered” him in the sense that a man “fathers” a child.
Thus God began the events that led up to our redemption – the only secure grounds we have for hope even today.
On Ascension Sunday, May 9, 2024, Pope Francis issued a “Bull of Indiction” entitled Spes Non Confundit (Hope Does Not Disappoint), proclaiming 2025 a Jubilee or Holy Year, starting throughout the world on Dec. 29, 2024, and ending on Dec. 28, 2025.
By ancient tradition, the Pope proclaims a jubilee year every 25 years. This one will lead up to the extraordinary jubilee of 2033, the 2,000th anniversary of our redemption.
“We need to recognize the immense goodness present in our world, lest we be tempted to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence,” Pope Francis said. “The signs of the times, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence, ought to become signs of hope.”
He cited the widespread desire for peace and the enthusiasm for life – the “joy of living” – that leads married couples to have children.
He called on Catholics to become “tangible signs of hope” to prisoners, migrants, the sick, the disabled, the young, the elderly, and the poor. In the spirit of Old Testament jubilees, he implored “the more affluent nations” to “acknowledge the gravity of so many of their past decisions and determine to forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them.”
“The earth is the Lord’s and all of us dwell in it as ‘aliens and tenants’ (Lv 25:23),” he said. If we really want peace, we must “commit ourselves to remedying the remote causes of injustice, settling unjust and unpayable debts, and feeding the hungry.”
Since 2025 is the 1,700th anniversary of the first great ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea, it can serve to give “concrete expression to this form of synodality,” the Pope said.
“From apostolic times,” bishops have gathered “to discuss doctrinal questions and disciplinary matters,” he noted. “In the first centuries of Christianity, synods frequently took place in both East and West, showing the importance of ensuring the unity of God’s people and the faithful proclamation of the Gospel” – a responsibility for “all the baptized.”
Pope Francis finished with the hope that during the Jubilee Year, Marian shrines everywhere be “sacred places of welcome and privileged spaces for the rebirth of hope.”
“I am confident that everyone, especially the suffering and those most in need, will come to know the closeness of Mary, the most affectionate of mothers, who never abandons her children and who, for the holy people of God, is ‘a sign of certain hope and comfort,’” he said.
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