Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community unified in its commitment to growing disciples for Christ
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport
Parish Office:
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass Times: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance
as we strive to bear witness
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm – 5:45pm)
Penguin - Saturday (5:15pm - 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is in need of assistance and has given permission to be contacted by Care and Concern, please phone the Parish Office.
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Please note: no Adoration for the month of January at Devonport
Weekday Masses 2nd - 7th January Mass Times Next Weekend 7th - 8th Jan, 2017
Monday: No Mass Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin Devonport
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
Thursday: 12noon Devonport 9:00am Ulverstone
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone 10:30am Devonport
12noon Devonport 11:00am Sheffield
Saturday 9:00am Ulverstone 5:00pm Latrobe
Devonport Friday
Adoration: Recommences 3rd February, 2017.
Devonport:
Benediction (1st Friday of the Month) - Recommences Friday 3rd
February, 2017.
Prayer Groups:
Charismatic Renewal - Devonport (Emmaus House)
Thursdays - 7:30pm - Recommencing 2nd February,
2017
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm. Recommencing 1st
February, 2017
Parish Office Closed until Tuesday 24th
January, 2017
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 5th
February, 2017
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Rob Belanger, Iris Wilson John
Lee-Archer, Helen Willis, David
Welch & …
Let us pray
for those who have died recently: Patricia Power, Carlene Norris. Cyprian Ibeke, Perpetua Floro Mark Marshall, Jenny Edwards, Joan Matthews, Anthony
Bird, Martin Xavier, Udofia John Okpon
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 28th Dec – 3rd
Jan
Kathleen Sheehan, Brian Salter, Grant Dell, Melville
Williams, Mavis Wise, Thelma Batt, Barbara George, Pearl Sheridan, William Cousins, Bill Kruk, Ian Stubbs,
Tori Enniss, Nicola Tenaglia, Roy Beechey and Cavell Robertson.
May they rest in peace
Weekly Ramblings
Welcome to
2017
As I write
this, even though there is a sense of new beginnings, I can’t help thinking
about the many changes that have occurred in our Parish community since I
arrived in the Parish three years ago. Quite a number of people have moved to
other parts of Tasmania and the world, the deaths of so many and the subsequent
sense of loss experienced by loved ones left behind and, equally sadly, the
departure of people from our worshipping community for any number of reasons
and we are the less for the loss of them all.
This week
also marks the final week of Fr Alex’s appointment in the Parish – for me that
is also a sense of loss because we have been able to grow our friendship and
relationship as priests working together wonderfully in recent times and that
will be something I will miss. I wish him every blessing as he goes and every
best wish for his time in the Circular Head Parish.
Otherwise, I am really looking forward to the
challenges that this coming year will bring (nothing to do with Fr Smiley being
here!!) – especially how we might be able to develop my Vision for the Parish
into a positive plan for the Parish.
Happy New Year to everyone – I pray that 2017 will be a
time of renewal and growth in our Parish.
Readings This Week: The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God - Year A
First Reading: Numbers 6:22-27
Second Reading: Galatians 4:4-7
Gospel: Luke 2:16-21
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
At the threshold of this New Year, I gently invite the Lord
into my own heart and soul.
I ask the Holy Spirit to lead me into this time of prayer.
In time I read St Luke’s familiar words slowly,
prayerfully. Perhaps I imagine the humble surroundings in my mind’s eye … the
circle of this little family … the news brought by these first visitors.
I look at Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, and at Mary.
What do I feel?
Reverence … joy … amazement … or...?
Maybe I linger here a little with Mary as she ponders all
that is precious about this birth … or what the future may hold for Mother and
Son.
I, too, may want to ask: What are the things I most
treasure in life? What are my own hopes, fears and dreams for this New Year …
both at home and in the wider world?
I speak to the Lord or to Mary about this from my heart, as
to a dear friend. I ask God with confidence for any grace I need.
When I feel ready, I give thanks for this time of prayer,
asking God to stay close as I return to all that awaits me. I end by praying
“Our Father” or “Hail Mary…”
Readings Next Week: The Epiphany of
the Lord - Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6
Second Reading: Ephesians 3:2-3. 5-6
Gospel: Matthew
2:1-12
ROSTERS FOR JANUARY
A reminder that the rosters for
parishioners involved in the weekly activities of the Parish are on the Notice
Boards in each Mass Centre.
SACRAMENTAL PROGRAM
A reminder that the Sacramental Program for children in Gr
3 and above (in 2017) will commence with a meeting on Monday, 20th
Feb in Devonport and on Tuesday, 21st Feb in Ulverstone. Both meetings
will commence at 7pm.
_________________________
ALPHA 2017
We will be launching a new series of ALPHA in 2017. The 12
week program looks at questions which impact on the lives of participants in a
relaxed and friendly atmosphere. There will be more information available in
coming weeks.
Simplicity
This series is taken from the daily email reflection posted by Fr
Second
Naiveté
My life
journey began as a very conservative pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic, pious and
law-abiding, living in quiet Kansas, buffered and bounded by my parents’ stable
marriage and many lovely liturgical traditions that sanctified my time and
space. I was a very happy child and young man, and all who knew me then would
agree. That was my first wonderful simplicity.
I was
gradually educated in a much larger world of the 1960s and 1970s with degrees
in philosophy and theology and a broad liberal arts education given me by the
Franciscans. I left the garden of innocence, just as Adam and Eve had to do. My
new Scriptural awareness made it obvious that Adam and Eve were probably not
historical figures, but important archetypal symbols. I was heady with
knowledge and “enlightenment,” no longer in “Kansas.” Though leaving the garden
was sad and disconcerting for a while, there was no going back.
As time
passed, I became simultaneously very traditional and very progressive, and I
have probably continued to be so to this day. I don’t fit in with the liberals
or the conservatives. This was my first strong introduction to paradox, and it
took most of midlife to figure out what had happened—and how and why it had to
happen. I found a much larger and even happier garden (note the new garden
described in Revelation 22). I thoroughly believe in Adam and Eve now, but on
about ten different levels, with literalism being the lowest and least
fruitful.
This
“pilgrim’s progress” was, for me, sequential, natural, and organic as the
circles widened. I was steadily being moved toward larger viewpoints and
greater inclusivity in my ideas, a deeper understanding of people, and a more
honest sense of justice. God always became bigger and led me to bigger places.
If God could include and allow, then why couldn’t I? If God asked me to love
unconditionally and universally, then it was clear that God operated in the
same way.
This process
of transformation was slow, and the realizations that came with it were not
either-or; they were great big both-and realizations. None of it happened
without much prayer, self-doubt, study, and conversation. I could transcend
precisely because I was able to include and broaden.
It seems we
all begin in naiveté and eventually return to a “second naiveté” or simplicity,
whether willingly or on our deathbed. This blessed simplicity is calm, knowing,
patient, inclusive, and self-forgetful. It helps us move beyond anger,
alienation, and ignorance. I believe this is the very goal of mature adulthood
and mature religion.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
(Jossey-Bass: 2011), 105-108.
Truth is One
Thomas R.
Kelly (1893-1941), a Quaker missionary, wrote a slender spiritual classic
called A Testament of Devotion. I will quote him at length, and you will see
another example of perennial wisdom. We are obviously being taught by the One
Spirit. Here is Kelly’s powerful description of the second simplicity that is the
goal of mature adulthood:
The last
fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity
of the children of God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It
is the naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning
of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busyness
for the Kingdom of God—yet how many are caught, and arrested in development,
within this adolescent development of the soul’s growth! The mark of this
simplified life is radiant joy. . . . Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not
agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time
with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men’s
problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. . . . It
binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple
adoration of Him who is all in all.
This amazing
simplification comes when we “center down,” when life is lived with singleness
of eye, from a holy Center where the breath and stillness of Eternity are heavy
upon us and we are wholly yielded to Him. Some of you know this holy,
recreating Center of eternal peace and joy and live in it day and night. Some
of you may see it over the margin and wistfully long to slip into that amazing
Center where the soul is at home with God. Be very faithful to that wistful
longing. It is the Eternal Goodness calling you to return Home, to feed upon
green pastures and walk beside still waters and live in the peace of the
Shepherd’s presence. It is the life beyond fevered strain. We are called beyond
strain, to peace and power and joy and love and thorough abandonment of self.
We are called to put our hands trustingly in His hand and walk the holy way, in
no anxiety assuredly resting in Him. [1]
Reference:
Thomas R.
Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (HarperSanFrancisco: 1941), 45-46.
Enoughness
and Contentment
We live in a
society that places great importance upon external signs of success. We have to
assure ourselves and others that we are valuable and important—because we
inherently doubt that we are! Thus we are often preoccupied with “one-upping”
others. I am afraid that most lose inside of such a “winner-takes-all” society.
We have great difficulty finding our inherent value with such a world view. Few
have deep conviction about their own soul or the Indwelling Holy Spirit.
People
living under capitalism find it almost unnatural to know their own center.
Dignity must always be “acquired” and earned. We live in an affluent society
that’s always expecting more, wanting more, and believes it even deserves more.
But the more we own, ironically enough, the less we enjoy. This is the paradox
of materialism. The more we project our soul’s longing onto things, the more
things disappoint us. Happiness is an inside job. When we expect to find
happiness outside of ourselves, we are always disappointed. We then seek a
“higher” or more stimulating experience and the spiral of addiction and
consumption continues.
Francis of
Assisi, whose feast we celebrate today, experienced radical participation in
God’s very life. Such practical knowing of his value and identity allowed
Francis to let go of status, privilege, and wealth. Francis knew he was part of
God’s plan, connected to creation and other beings, inherently in communion and
in love. Francis taught his followers to own nothing so they would not be owned
by their possessions.
If you don’t
live from within your own center of connection and communion, you’ll go
spinning around things. The true goal of all religion is to lead you back to
the place where everything is one, to the experience of radical unity with all
of humanity, and hence to the experience of unity with God.
When you live
in pure consciousness, letting the naked being of all reality touch your own
naked being, you experience foundational participation. Out of that
plentitude—a sense of satisfaction and inner enoughness, a worldview of
abundance—you find it much easier to live simply. You realize you don’t “need”
as much. You’ve found your satisfaction at an inner place, at a deeper level
inside you. You’re able to draw from this abundance and share it freely with
others. And you stop trying to decide who is worthy of it, because you now know
that you are not “worthy” either. It is one hundred percent pure gift!
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go (The Crossroad Publishing
Company: 1991, 2003), 86-87, 89; and
The Great
Chain of Being: Simplifying Our Lives (CAC: 2007), MP3 download.
Brothers and
Sisters to All
My brothers,
my sisters, God has called me to walk in the way of humility, and showed me the
way of simplicity. . . . The Lord has shown me that he wants me to be a new
kind of fool in the world, and God does not want to lead us by any other
knowledge than that. —Francis of Assisi
[1]
Franciscan
prophecy is at its core “soft prophecy”—which is often the hardest of all!
Rather than criticize and shame the evils of his time, St. Francis simply lived
differently and let his lifestyle be his sermon. This way of life is counter to
the ways of the world, a kind of “holy foolishness” that doesn’t make logical
sense to our consumer, quid-pro-quo economy.
My father
Francis is probably the poster child for the way of simplicity. It is only
fitting that his namesake, Pope Francis, turned to him in the introduction to
his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home:
10. . . . I believe that Saint Francis is
the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral
ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. . . . He was a mystic and a
pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others,
with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is
between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and
interior peace.
11. . . . Just as happens when we fall in
love with someone, whenever he would gaze at the sun, the moon or the smallest
of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He
communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them “to
praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason.” [2] His response to
the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or
economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to
him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that
exists. His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the
primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would
call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister.’” [3]
. . . If we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care
will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no
mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn
reality into an object simply to be used and controlled. [4]
Saints and
mystics do not know things subject to object, but they know things subject to
subject, center to center, two dignities mirroring one another.
References:
[1] Regis J.
Armstrong, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. 2, The Founder (New City:
2000), 132-133.
[2] Thomas
of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis, I, 29, 81, in Francis of Assisi: Early
Documents, Vol. 1 (New York-London-Manila: 1999), 251.
[3] The
Major Legend of Saint Francis, VIII, 6, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents,
Vol. 2 (New York-London-Manila: 2000), 590.
[4] Pope
Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (Libreria Editrice Vaticana:
2015), paragraphs 10 and 11.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 33, 41.
Structural
and Personal Freedom
Francis and
Clare of Assisi were not so much prophets by what they said as in the radical,
system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner
and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of church
and society. Too often people seek either inner freedom or mere outer freedom,
but seldom—in my opinion—do people seek and find both. Francis and Clare did.
Their agenda
for justice was the most foundational and undercutting of all others: a very
simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real
meaning of the vow of poverty), plus a conscious identification with the
marginalized of society (the communion of saints pushed to its outer edge). In
this position, you do not “do” acts of peace and justice as much as your life
is itself peace and justice. You take your small and sufficient place in the
great and grand scheme of God.
By “living
on the edge of the inside” I mean building on the solid Tradition (“from the
inside”) from a new and creative stance where you cannot be co-opted for
purposes of security, possessions, or the illusions of power (“on the edge”).
Francis and Clare placed themselves outside the social and ecclesiastical system.
Francis was not a priest, nor were Franciscan men to pursue priesthood in the
early years of the order. Theirs was not a spirituality of earning or seeking
worthiness, career, church status, moral one-upmanship, or divine favor (which
they knew they already had).
Within their
chosen structural freedom, Francis and Clare also found personal, mental, and
emotional freedom. They were free from negativity and ego. Such liberation is
full Gospel freedom.
Today, most
of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside of
structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or
unwilling to critique. Our mortgages, luxuries, and privileged lifestyles
control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security
and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think. Self-serving
institutions that give us our security, status, or identity are considered “too
big to fail” and are invariably beyond judgment from the vast majority of
people. Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals. [1]
When Jesus
and John’s Gospel used the term “the world,” they did not mean the earth,
creation, or civilization, which Jesus clearly came to love and save (see John
12:47). They were referring to idolatrous systems and institutions that are
invariably self-referential and “always passing away” (see 1 Corinthians 7:31).
Francis and Clare showed us it is possible to change the system not by negative
attacks (which tend to inflate the ego), but simply by quietly moving to the
side and doing it better!
References:
[1] See
Richard Rohr, Spiral of Violence: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (CAC:
2008), CD and MP3 download.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan
Media: 2014), 33-36.
Where You
Can't Be Bought Off
When Francis
said, after kissing the leper, “I left the world,” he was saying that he was
giving up on the usual payoffs, constraints, and rewards of business-as-usual
and was choosing to live in the largest Kingdom of all. To pray and actually
mean “thy Kingdom come,” we must also be able to say “my kingdoms go.” At best,
most Christians split their loyalties between God and Caesar, but Francis and
Clare did not. Their first citizenship was always, and in every case,
elsewhere, which paradoxically allowed them to live in this world with joy,
detachment, and freedom (see Philippians 3:20).
When you
agree to live simply, you put yourself outside of others’ ability to buy you
off, reward you falsely, or control you by money, status, salary, punishment,
and loss or gain. This is the most radical level of freedom, but, of course, it
is not easy to come by. Francis and Clare had little to lose, no desire for
gain, no loans or debts to pay off, and no luxuries that they needed or wanted.
Most of us can only envy them.
When you
agree to live simply, you do not consider the immigrant, the refugee, the
homeless person, or the foreigner as a threat to you or as competition with
you. You have chosen their marginal state for yourself—freely and consciously
becoming “visitors and pilgrims” in this world, as Francis puts it (quoting 1
Peter 2:11). A simple lifestyle is quite simply an act of solidarity with the
way most people have lived since the beginnings of humanity. It is thus
restorative justice instead of the very limited notion of retributive justice.
When you
voluntarily agree to live simply, you do not need to get into the frenzy of
work for the sake of salary or the ability to buy nonessentials or raise your
social standing. You enjoy the freedom of not climbing. You might climb for
others, but not only for yourself.
When you
agree to live simply, you have time for spiritual and corporal works of mercy
because you have renegotiated in your mind and heart your very understanding of
time and its purposes. Time is not money, despite the common aphorism. Time is
life itself!
When you
agree to live simply, people cease to be possessions and objects for your
consumption or use. Your lust for relationships or for others to serve you,
your need for admiration, your desire to use people or things as commodities
for your personal pleasure, or any need to control and manipulate others,
slowly—yes, very slowly—falls away. Only then are you free to love.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 36-40.
On 1 January, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It may seem like a simple or even obvious name to give to Mary, but the controversies that beset the development of this particular devotion reveal otherwise. Dorian Llywelyn SJ explores the enduring significance of this ancient feast, the title of which ‘contains the whole mystery of the Incarnation.’ The original article can be found here
Manchester University’s John Rylands Library is the home of a fragment of Egyptian papyrus. ‘Rylands 470’, as the library’s catalogue calls this fragile manuscript, measures merely some seven inches by two. On it is written in Greek the words ‘Mother of God, hear my supplications: suffer us not to be in adversity, but deliver us from danger. Thou alone…’ Probably written for personal prayer, this is an early version of a Marian prayer which Catholics know as Sub tuum praesidium or ‘Beneath thy protection.’ Experts date Rylands 470 to the middle of the third century AD. This tiny papyrus is of great importance for understanding how early Christians regarded the Virgin Mary. It allows us to surmise reasonably that by 250 or so, Christians in Egypt had already been venerating the mother of Jesus for some time and seeking her protection.
The historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan explained Theotokos – the Greek word we translate as ‘Mother of God’ – as meaning ‘the one who gave birth to the one who was God.’ Where Jesus had asked ‘who do people say I am?’, succeeding centuries were driven by the question ‘what do we say he is?’ as Christians struggled to understand and explain what it meant for the Word to take flesh. Is Jesus divine in the same sense that the Father is divine? Human in the same way that you and I are human? These were no abstract, arcane questions, for how people understood the who and what of Jesus also shaped their ideas of salvation and indeed of Christian life. The precise relationship between the divine and the human in Jesus was also a template for what it meant to be simultaneously Christian and human, or a member of the Church and a citizen of the Empire.
In the first decades of the fifth century, in an atmosphere of deep thought and often fervid debate, the role of Jesus’s mother became a matter of controversy. To refer to Mary as ‘Mother of God’ was – and indeed is still for some people – potentially scandalous. How can a woman, merely part of creation, give birth to the Creator? Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople (c.386-450) argued that the title Theotokos meant that the whole Godhead had been born as a man – an idea he found repugnant. How could a woman give birth to God? Nestorius’s suggestion that Mary should be addressed instead as Christotokos (‘Mother of the Christ’) or Anthropotokos (‘Mother of the Man’) was bitterly opposed by his arch-nemesis, the wily Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria and by the redoubtable empress Pulcheria, who sought to live her life in imitation of Mary. Nestorius’s opponents saw in his rejection of the Virgin’s title a refusal to accept the unity of the human and the divine in Jesus. The implication was that the life of heaven had nothing to do with the things of earth. But equally, Nestorius was also refuting the faith of the people and a venerable tradition: by that point, Christians had been addressing the Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of God’ for at least two centuries. These theological differences threatened the unity of the Church and the empire alike.
To calm the tensions, the Emperor Theodosius convened an ecumenical council at Ephesus in 431. The bishops gathered there voted to condemn Nestorius’s position. As a result, the title Theotokos (or its translation into other languages) remains the standard and most important way in Eastern Christianity of referring to the mother of Jesus.
The phrase ‘Mother of God’ and the Solemnity that the Catholic world celebrates on New Year’s Day appears at first glance to say little beyond the fact that Mary was the mother of Jesus. Yet in the same way that Mary’s womb ‘contained the God whom the universe cannot contain‘, as the Orthodox liturgical texts for Christmas say, her title ‘Mother of God’ contains whole worlds of meaning. The paradox of the Incarnation is, as a medieval English carol says, ‘heaven and earth in little space.’ Simply put, to call Mary ‘Mother of God’ states that her Son was divine. To say that Mary was a ‘birth-giver’ says that the divine Son was ‘born of a woman’ (Gal 4:4) and thus fully human. The phrase is a summary of the foundational belief that the ‘Word became flesh and pitched his tent amongst us’ (John 1:14). St John of Damascus, writing in the first half of the eighth century and summing up the teaching of the earlier Church Fathers, says that the title Theotokos ‘contains the whole mystery of the Incarnation.’
The decision of the Council of Ephesus spurred devotion to the Mother of God throughout the Roman Empire. Only a few years after the debates, Pope Sixtus III built the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the first churches dedicated to Mary. Over the centuries, there gradually accumulated a deepening vision of the person and role of the Virgin, expressed in a complex matrix of theological speculation, public and private worship, legendary narratives, miracle stories, homilies and hymns, buildings and images. The most famous of early hymns to Mary, the Akathistos, attributed to Romanos the Melodist (c.490-556), addresses her not only as Theotokos but with hundreds of titles that place her – or rather, strictly speaking, the fact that she had given birth to the Saviour – at the centre of all history. The unparalleled stature of Mary grew, venerated as the crown of all creation and a figure to whom the faithful could seek recourse in troubled times.
Even before Ephesus, Marian feasts had found their way into the liturgy of the Church. Other Marian celebrations, modeled on the feasts commemorating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, were introduced into the church calendars in Constantinople and Jerusalem. When the Christmas Octave developed in Rome in the 7th century, the Virgin Mother of God was given her own special feast, the Natale Sanctae Mariae (the Commemoration of Holy Mary) celebrated on 1 January, at the end of the Christmas Octave. The Solemnity that opens our calendar year is thus the most ancient Marian feast of all.
Older Catholics might remember 1 January, however, as the feast of the Circumcision. As the Marian feasts of the Annunciation and the Assumption began to be celebrated annually, emphases had shifted. By the fourteenth century, 1 January was being celebrated as the Circumcision of the Lord and the Octave of Christmas. Despite the change of title, this was nonetheless a feast replete with readings and prayers involving Mary. In 1969, the revision of the Roman Calendar restored the original focus of the day, declaring that ‘1st January, the Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord, is the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, and also the commemoration of the conferral of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.’
Yet you might reasonably ask, what do these historical and theological minutiae have to do with 1 January 2016? Vatican II teaches us that in the work of salvation, the union of the Mother of God with her Son is ‘made manifest from the time of Christ's virginal conception up to His death’ (Lumen Gentium §57). An ancient understanding of the Crucifixion scene of the Gospel of John – an instinct older even than Rylands 470 – interprets the words of Jesus to his mother and to the beloved disciple to mean that that the love between mother and son is now extended to all disciples: the Mother of God is also and inseparably Mother of the Church. Yet in the last 50 or so years, Catholics’ devotion to the Mother of God has, at least in some quarters, declined or become an inessential extra to a healthy faith-life. In these more ecumenically-sensitive times, when Mary can be like her Son, a sign of contradiction, the mother of Jesus has sometimes faded from awareness. Yet to know and love Jesus requires that we also know and love Mary. Or, as the Orthodox theologian Fr. Georges Florovsky put it, ‘to ignore the Mother means to misinterpret the Son.’ Yet even when Christians are not present to her, the Mother of God remains constantly present to her Church.
Blessed Paul VI’s 1967 Exhortation on Marian devotion, Marialis Cultus, tells us that this Solemnity ‘is meant to commemorate the part played by Mary in this mystery of salvation (the Incarnation) and also to exalt the singular dignity which this mystery brings to the holy Mother...through whom we were found worthy to receive the Author of life.’ That ‘mystery of salvation’ is in effect like a brilliant diamond, where each facet, reflects the whole. All the differing names and emphases of the Church’s feasts for 1 January reflect what is the same, profound truth of the Incarnation – a mystery in which Mary has a unique, central role.
The title Theotokos arose first from from the spiritual instincts of generations of Christians, who experienced the effects of the Virgin’s intercession as fruit of the Incarnation. Later thinkers expressed the same idea in more intellectual terms. The Catechism teaches us: ‘What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ’ (487). Prayer and doctrine alike express the fact that to venerate Mary as Mother of God is also to honour and love her Son.
In the same way, celebrating the Circumcision at the Christmas Octave, as the Church did for centuries, emphasises the reality that Jesus was a Jew. His Jewishness, inherited from his mother, is the expression and the guarantee of his real human existence. Through the Virgin Mother, we have a fully human Saviour who experienced hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness as well as intimacy with his heavenly Father, and who can thus sympathise with us in our weaknesses. Moreover, the baby that Mary held in her arms at the temple is the long-awaited Messiah, the fulfillment of the centuries of waiting and hoping: the aged Simeon recognises Jesus as the light of the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people. To commemorate the giving of a name to Mary’s son also reminds us of his Jewish background, but in addition reflects Mary’s obedience to the command of the Archangel to call her son Jesus. In the Jewish mind, the name encapsulates the deep identity of a person: Yeshua, the Hebrew original of the name Jesus, means ‘The Lord saves.’ The Virgin’s Son is also named Emmanuel, God-with-us, God’s fidelity to his creation made man. And in the Jesuit world, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (which also used to be celebrated at the Christmas Octave but has now moved to 3 January) has a special resonance: the Society takes its name from Jesus and has adopted the Christogram IHS – the first three letters of the Greek form of Yeshua – as its own emblem.
One last facet of this Solemnity demands our attention. New Year’s Day 2016 will be celebrated by a troubled world which seems to be more filled with violence and tension than for many years past. In 1968, Paul VI designated 1 January as an annual World Day of Peace. His words in Marialis Cultus remain particularly poignant: ‘This is a fitting occasion for renewing adoration of the newborn Prince of Peace, for listening once more to the glad tidings of the angels (cf. Lk. 2:14), and for imploring from God, through the Queen of Peace, the supreme gift of peace.’ This year, as ever, the Church prays that the Mother of God and the Mother of Church will hear our supplications, suffer us not to be in adversity but deliver all the nations of the earth from danger.
Dorian Llywelyn is a Welshman and a member of the California Province of the Society of Jesus. He is currently teaching systematic theology at Heythrop College, University of London, and superior of the Brixton Jesuit Community.
