The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God was just celebrated on January 1 and today is the first Saturday of January, a day in which we attend a little more to the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is appropriate to stay close to the Mary in these early days of 2014 for it is Mary who will lead us into the arms of the Messiah. I came across this reflection on Mary by the Cistercian Father Blessed Guerric of Igny. As I have echoed so often before on these pages, a proper Marian theology always indicates a proper Christology. This Berlinghieri icon of the Theotokos (1230) illustrates what I think is the true Marian theology of our Church: to know Mary is to know, love and serve her Son. In the printed word, thanks to Blessed Guerric we have a great example of what the Church teaches: Mary always points to her Son and Savior; Christ is made known through the yes of Mary. Today, ask yourself, in our own body, do we say yes to Jesus Christ?
“One and unique was Mary’s child, the only Son of his Father in heaven and the only Son of his mother on earth. Mary alone was virgin-mother, and it is her glory to have borne the Father’s only Son. But now she embraces that only Son of hers in all his members. She is not ashamed to be called the mother of all those in whom she recognizes that Christ her Son has been or is on the point of being formed…Like the Church of which she is the model, Mary is the mother of all who are born again to new life. She is the mother of him who is the Life by which all things live; when she bore him, she gave new birth in a sense to all who were to live by his life. Recognizing that by virtue of this mystery she is the mother of all Christians, Christ’s blessed mother also shows herself a mother to them by her care and loving kindness. She never grows hard toward her children, as though they were not her own. The womb that once gave birth is not dried up; it continues to bring forth the fruit of her tender compassion. Christ, the blessed fruit of that womb, left his mother still fraught with inexhaustible love, a love that once came forth from her but remains always within her, inundating her with his gifts.”