Friday, January 1, 2010

A Resolution to Mary, Mother of God

I want to know who in their right mind decided to make New Year's Day a holy day of obligation? Seriously, the day after all us drunk Irishmen go out drinking we have to wake up for mass?? But it is and I did my duty trekked out bright and early this morning for the Solemnity of the Mary, the Mother of God. (Okay--I may exaggerate a little--I didn't go drinking and mass was at 10 am)

So we celebrate Mary, the Mother of God today. A little apologetics lesson. Some are critical of the title "Mother of God" saying that God was here before anything so God could not have a mother. True but Mary is the mother of Jesus. Jesus is God. So if a=b=c and Jesus is mother of Jesus who is God then Mary is the Mother of God. It's as simple as that!

As I lay, meditating about Mary, the Mother of God and how it falls on New Year's Day I came up with a brilliant idea. You see, I do not have a great devotion to Mary. I can't tell you when the last time I said a rosary or asked her intercession or anything like that. So I decided for a new years resolution, I would work on my devotion to Mary. You see, sometimes I feel like I'm at a hump in the road in my spiritual life. I feel like I'm just treading water and don't have that passion and zeal for God that I should. I suppose that's what happens when you hang around holy and spiritual people--you see how much you need to improve. So, who better to help me to get me get closer to Jesus that his mother. After all, from the cross, one of His final words were, looking at Mary his said, "Woman, behold your son." Then looking at his beloved disciple said, "Behold--your mother." Since the early church, it's been traditionally taught that by doing this, Jesus gave Mary to us as a mother to take care of us and help us. I think I need to take Jesus up on his offer.

I'm going to take it a step further though. The second part of my resolution is to have a deeper devotion to my own mother. I need to do a better job of honoring my mother. I need to call her more often. Visit her more often and actually send her gifts for Mother's Day and her birthday.

Finally, I need to do a better job at having a devotion towards the mother of my children. Mary may be the Queen of Heaven, but Abby is the Queen of my household and I need to do a better job at expressing this. By doing so, I hope to be an example to my daughters as to what to expect from their own husbands and to my son as to how to act towards his future wife.

5 comments:

  1. Have you called Mom yet to wish her a Happy New Year? :-)

    I actually read in Danielle Bean's book that putting this Marian feast day at the beginning of the year is a good way for us to not only make New Year's resolutions like lose 10 lbs, quit smoking, spend more time with the kids; but also a time to make spiritual resolutions as well. And we need a mother to help us in our way to keep our spiritual resolutions...Mary is the woman for that! (And about a billion other things!)

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  2. Great blog post! I want to increase my devotion to Mary as well. Thanks for bringing it to people's attention today in your words. Happy New Year!

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  3. Great post! Our priest today spoke of the issue people have with calling Mary the mother of God, but has he described it, she is the Mother of God made Flesh. It made a lot of sense (and thought I follow the A=B=C logic, it's seemed simpler too).
    Happy New Year!

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  4. For the record---I did call my mom today. :-)

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  5. Beautiful post. I came across your blog by accident looking for ways to honor Mary....you summed up what I was looking for very nicely.

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