Vatican City, 1 January 2014 (VIS) –
This Wednesday, Solemnity of Holy Mary Mother of God, and Octave of
Christmas, the Holy Father presided at the Holy Mass in the Vatican
Basilica, concelebrated by Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson,
president of the Pontifical Council “Justice and Peace”;
Archbishop Pietro Parolin, secretary of State; Archbishop Giovanni
Angelo Becciu, substitute secretary of State; and Archbishop
Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States. Today is
also 47th World Day of Peace, the theme of which is “Fraternity,
the foundation and pathway to peace”.
The full text of Pope Francis' homily
is published below:
“In the first reading we find the
ancient prayer of blessing which God gave to Moses to hand on to
Aaron and his sons: 'The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make
his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up
his countenance upon you and give you peace'. There is no more
meaningful time than the beginning of a new year to hear these words
of blessing: they will accompany our journey through the year opening
up before us. They are words of strength, courage and hope. Not an
illusory hope, based on frail human promises, or a naive hope which
presumes that the future will be better simply because it is the
future. Rather, it is a hope that has its foundation precisely in
God’s blessing, a blessing which contains the greatest message of
good wishes there can be; and this is the message which the Church
brings to each of us, filled with the Lord’s loving care and
providential help.
“The message of hope contained in
this blessing was fully realized in a woman, Mary, who was destined
to become the Mother of God, and it was fulfilled in her before all
creatures.
The Mother of God. This is the first
and most important title of Our Lady. It refers to a quality, a role
which the faith of the Christian people, in its tender and genuine
devotion to our heavenly Mother, has understood from the beginning.
We recall that great moment in the history of the ancient Church, the
Council of Ephesus, in which the divine motherhood of the Virgin Mary
was authoritatively defined. The truth of her divine maternity found
an echo in Rome where, a little later, the Basilica of Saint Mary
Major was built, the first Marian shrine in Rome and in the entire
West, in which the image of the Mother of God – the Theotokos –
is venerated under the title of Salus Populi Romani. It is said that
the residents of Ephesus used to gather at the gates of the basilica
where the bishops were meeting and shout, 'Mother of God!'. The
faithful, by asking them to officially define this title of Our Lady,
showed that they acknowledged her divine motherhood. Theirs was the
spontaneous and sincere reaction of children who know their Mother
well, for they love her with immense tenderness. But it is more: it
is the sensus fidei of the holy People of God which, in its unity,
never errs.
“Mary has always been present in the
hearts, the piety and above all the pilgrimage of faith of the
Christian people. 'The Church journeys through time… and on this
journey she proceeds along the path already trodden by the Virgin
Mary'. Our journey of faith is the same as that of Mary, and so we
feel that she is particularly close to us. As far as faith, the hinge
of the Christian life, is concerned, the Mother of God shared our
condition. She had to take the same path as ourselves, a path which
is sometimes difficult and obscure. She had to advance in the
'pilgrimage of faith'.
“Our pilgrimage of faith has been
inseparably linked to Mary ever since Jesus, dying on the Cross, gave
her to us as our Mother, saying: 'Behold your Mother!'. These words
serve as a testament, bequeathing to the world a Mother. From that
moment on, the Mother of God also became our Mother! When the faith
of the disciples was most tested by difficulties and uncertainties,
Jesus entrusted them to Mary, who was the first to believe, and whose
faith would never fail. The 'woman' became our Mother when she lost
her divine Son. Her sorrowing heart was enlarged to make room for all
men and women, all, whether good or bad, and she loves them as she
loved Jesus. The woman who at the wedding at Cana in Galilee gave her
faith-filled cooperation so that the wonders of God could be
displayed in the world, at Calvary kept alive the flame of faith in
the resurrection of her Son, and she communicates this with maternal
affection to each and every person. Mary becomes in this way a
source of hope and true joy!
“The Mother of the Redeemer goes
before us and continually strengthens us in faith, in our vocation
and in our mission. By her example of humility and openness to God’s
will she helps us to transmit our faith in a joyful proclamation of
the Gospel to all, without reservation. In this way our mission will
be fruitful, because it is modelled on the motherhood of Mary. To her
let us entrust our journey of faith, the desires of our heart, our
needs and the needs of the whole world, especially of those who
hunger and thirst for justice and peace, and for God. Let us then
together invoke her, and I invite you to invoke her three times,
following the example of those brothers and sisters of Ephesus:
Mother of God! Mother of God! Mother of God! Amen”.
No comments:
Post a Comment