1st Jan marks the Octave of Christmas. Today is 8 days after
Christmas. Every liturgical year, the Church celebrates two Octaves: Christmas
and Easter. In some countries, 1st Jan is also a Holy Day of
Obligation. The Solemnity is important for the Church and until recently very
important for the Society of Jesus. The official title is Solemnity of Mary,
the Holy Mother of God. I said “recently” just now and so for the Society of
Jesus, 1st Jan was important because it was, apart from it being the
Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God, also the Feast of the Giving of the Name
of Jesus. Recently is as recent as 2002. With the latest edition of the Latin
Missale Romanum of 2002, a
decoupling took place. Mary, Holy Mother of God remained the Solemnity we mark
on 1st Jan whilst the Feast of Giving of the Name of Jesus has been
shifted to 3rd Jan. But, even for so progressive a Society like the
Jesuits, for the time being, we will still celebrate today as our Titular Feast
but in time to come, when our liturgy catches up with the Calendar of the
Universal Church[1],
the Jesuit’s Titular Feast will be shifted to 3rd Jan. One of the
reasons for shifting the Feast of the Giving of the Name of Jesus is because a
Solemnity ranks above a Feast.
These are just some technical trivia so that you might ask why we should
not celebrate the Giving of the Name of Jesus on 1st Jan, after all
He is the Lord. Instead, the Church has given the honour to Our Lady. The next
logical question would be: “Are we giving too much honour to Our Lady”?
The question as to why we should celebrate Mary, the Holy Mother of God, on
1st Jan lays bare a fear we may have that as Catholics we are idolaters.
Putting aside the fear, let us attempt to uncover the foundation for why we
give such great honour to Mary.
Not long after the event of the death and resurrection of Christ, even at
the stage where the Gospels were being composed, there were already distortions
about who Christ really was. There were already Gnostic tendencies within the
community of St John. They did not believe that Christ had come in the flesh.
How could He condescend to become human when flesh is “evil”? John’s Gospel was
a response against these tendencies. By the use of the word “flesh”, John indicated
that Jesus did not just take on a body as if He were putting on clothes. The Word
was made “flesh” meant that Jesus was not some kind of appearance and nor was
He some kind of a ghost. In fact, John’s Gospel was a
detailed record of the facticity or concreteness of the event of the
Incarnation. John 1—the Word became flesh; John 6—my flesh is real food and my
blood is real drink; and finally, John 20ff—the post-Resurrection encounters of
the Disciples with Jesus took place bodily, albeit a glorified body. “Put your
finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side”.
Furthermore, the
Giving of the Name of Jesus coincides with the 8th Day—as detailed
in the Gospel—the day on which Christ was circumcised. Here again, the circumcision
is a reminder that Christ came in the flesh and that He did not merely appear
in the flesh.
St Paul in the
Letter to the Colossians made mention of this flesh: In His body lives the
fullness of divinity (Col 2: 9). Here we are brought into the fullness of the
mystery which we have been celebrating these last 8 days: Christ is True God
and True Man and not 50% God and 50% Man. He is not like your Toyota Prius, a
hybrid car that uses both fossil fuel and battery power. This mystery of the
God-made-man is called the Incarnation. And to call Mary the Holy Mother of God
is to make this mystery as real as it can be.
It is upon this
mystery that the foundation for the whole theology of the Sacraments rests. The
Sacraments are often considered a Catholic preoccupation but they are not. In
fact, Pope St. Leo the Great used to say "Since the Lord is no longer
visible among us, everything of Him that was visible has passed into the Sacraments".
In effect, the Sacraments would not be possible without the event of the
Incarnation. This follows from what John
wrote of the Jesus whom he saw with his own eyes and touched with his own
hands: The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory (John
1:14).
Mary is called
the Holy Mother of God only because Jesus is God. And this dogma declared in AD431 at
the Council of Ephesus has salvific implications. Again we quote Pope
St Leo the Great: “Henceforth, He is reckoned to be of the stock, not of His earthly
father but of Christ, who became the Son of Man precisely that men could also
be sons of God. For unless in humility He had come down to us, none of us by
our own merits could ever go up to Him”.
So, are we idolatrous in our relationship with
Mary? Or do we give too much honour to Mary? Not at all. Mary, the Holy Mother
of God is a statement of our salvation as it cuts through any attempt to fudge the
question of the universal salvation of mankind. Let me read you the Preface III
for Sunday, both from the old and new translation that you may appreciate how
important the fullness Christ’s divinity and humanity is for salvation.
We see your infinite power in your loving plan
of salvation. You came to our rescue by your power as God but you wanted us to
be saved by one like us. Man refused your friendship but man himself was to
restore it through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Old translation).
For we know it belongs to your boundless
glory, that you came to the aid of mortality itself, with your divinity and
even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself, that the cause of our
downfall might become the means of our salvation, through Christ our Lord. (New translation).
No Marian
dogma is ever about Mary alone. So, right at the beginning of the year, in declaring
Mary to be the Holy Mother of God, the Church unequivocally declares that Jesus
the Lord is the Saviour of the world and through Jesus’ humanity, mankind is
saved.
[1]Every religious congregation has a titular feast. It could be the
Founder’s Feast Day. Since the official name for the Jesuits is the Society of
Jesus, it makes sense that the titular feast should be the Feast of the Giving
of the Holy Name of Jesus.
