Let Mary Guide Us Enter into and Journey with Her Son, Jesus Christ!

As we begin a new year in honoring Mary as the Theotokos, let her help us grow in our intimacy with her beloved son, the Son of God, Jesus, throughout the year. 

カトリックの典礼暦において元旦は'マリアを神の母（Theotokos）として祝う日です。この世の人間でマリアほどキリストをしっている人はいません、なぜならば、彼女が腹をいためて産んだ子がキリストであり、しかも、マリアは息子のキリストのこの世での一生涯をしっかりと見守るというだけでなく分かち合ってきました。よって、マリアを通してキリストの人生へ、そして、これによってキリストを通して天の父へとアプローチできるのです。カトリックでは新年早々こう考え、新年の誓いは、マリアのガイドでよりキリストと親しく交わり、より意義深い一年となるように精進することです。

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While we begin a liturgical year on the First Sunday of Advent, we celebrate Mary as the Mother of God (Theotokos) as we complete Christmas Octave. What a nice way to honor the Theotokos, as we let a new year roll in, because Mary is not only the mother of Jesus but also our mother, as Jesus declared her also ours (John 19:27). As this Marian feast follows the feast Sunday of the Holy Family, celebrating Mary brings a great joy that we are in the Holy Family, thanks to Jesus sharing his mother, Mary, with us.

It is also important to note that Mary is essential to understand Jesus, her son, the Son of God, the living Christ. It is because Mary enjoys her unique object relation with Jesus. In juxtaposing Jesus’ unique object relation with the Father in heaven (i.e. John 10:30) to his another unique object relation with his mother, Mary, we can come to deepen our Christological appreciation.  In honoring Mary as the Theolokos as we begin a new year, let us start our journey with Christ, as Mary did. For this, let us enter into the life of Christ through Mary’s life, because her life was for him.

As reflectively guided by the Holy Rosary and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, for example, we can deeply meditate on the Paschal Mystery in the life of Jesus through the life of Mary. It is because Mary was made glatia plena already when she was conceived, as God had already chosen her to serve Him as the Theotokos, God-bearer, mother of God. It means that Mary’s ontological reason was solely grounded in Christ the Son in Trinity so that all the Old Testament Messianic prophecies are fulfilled for us.  Who else among the humans, besides Mary, knows the life of Jesus?  Upon the Annunciation, Mary began to carry the earthly life of Jesus in her womb, and gave birth to him in the fullness of time. Together with her chaste and faithful husband, Joseph, Mary, as the mother of Jesus, took a good care of him, as he grew up to become a strong and wise young man in Nazareth.

Without Mary, the Logos-Theos (John 1:1) could have not become flesh to dwell among us (John 1:14).  For the Logos-Theos to become the human flesh of Jesus in her womb, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:38; Luke 1:35), God made Mary glatia plena, the Immaculata Conceitio Beatae Virginis, as Bl. John Duns Scott and Pope Pius IX have theologically explained.  Because of this, Mary is an integral part of Christology. In other words, we cannot understand Christology, Christ himself, without understanding Mary as the Theotokos.

From her conception on, Mary’s ontological reason has been solely to serve God as the Theotokos. Otherwise, why God had to keep Mary without any trace of the Original Sin? Because she said “Yes” to the Will of God (Luke 1:38), Mary served fully her ontological reason to be the Immaculata Conceptio. And, this is for our salvation.

When Jesus was conceived, it was in the womb of the blessed virgin, Mary, who was the Immaculata Conceptio, gratia plena.  It was Mary, of whom Jesus was born to this world (Luke 2:7).  It was Mary’s breast milk that baby Jesus enjoyed in growing healthy and strong during his infancy. It was Mary, with whom Jesus developed secure mother-child attachment, though he has been in one with the Father (John 10:30) ever since before the Creation as wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-31) and as the Logos-Theos (John 1:1).  Mary, as his mother, was with him when Jesus was circumcised and given name, Jesus, as Angel Gabriel told her (Luke 2:21).  She was also with him, when Simeon prophesized of Jesus as the Messiah and her suffering because of the Messianic quality of her son (Luke 2:29-32, 34-35). She was the one who expressed how great her anxieties were while he was missing when he was found in the Temple (Luke 2:48). 

It was also Mary, who prompted Jesus’ first miracle (John 2:1-12). Mary was with her son, Jesus, at the foot of the Cross, when he was Crucified and died (John 19:25) and held his corpse in sorrow, as reflected in Michelangelo’s Pieta.  Before he took his last breath, Jesus proclaimed that Mary is also our mother (John 19:27), alluding that we are his brothers in his Holy Family, also reflected in Galatians 4:4-7 (the Second Reading for the Feast of Mary the Mother of God).

It was also Mary, whom Jesus came to see upon his Resurrection, as St. John Paul II implicated in his May 21, 1997, address to the general audience, also as meditgated in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, #218-225, 299, and celebrated in the Filipino Catholic tradition of Salubong. Therefore, only Mary, the Theotokos, has journeyed the whole life of Jesus, the life of Christ on earth, the whole Paschal Mystery, in his life.

Mary, the Theotokos, help us enter deeply into the life of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as you are always with her and as you know the way to him, who is the way to the  Father.

May our journey with Christ through Mary make our life more meaningful this year.