Let’s go to Mary on New Year’s Day

January 1 is, of course, New Year’s Day. We will be noisy on that day, heartily welcoming 2019, a new page in our book of life. But that day is first of all, in our liturgical calendar, the Solemnity of the Divine Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It would be nice that with all our human ways of celebrating the New Year’s Day, we would also be aware that we have to celebrate it liturgically, that is, going to Christ, now recently born, who will do everything to teach, sanctify and lead us to heaven, our definitive home. Let’s not to get distracted by our human way of celebrating New Year’s Day.

In the liturgy, especially in the celebration of the Holy Mass, we join Christ in his continuing work of redemption, carried out now through the instrumentality of the sacraments of the Church. The liturgy makes present and effective the saving work of Christ. As is known, Christ’s work of redemption is not simply a historical event, buried in the past. It continues up to now ‘in vivo.’

And the Church wants us to start the new year with Mary, the Mother of God because she is the Mother of Christ, and she is also our Mother, because Christ gave her to us as our mother too. “Behold your mother,” (Jn 19,27) Christ told the apostle John who at that moment represented the whole of humanity.

It is good to be mindful of this truth of our faith because Mary our Mother is the best companion we can have in going through our earthly pilgrimage toward God, toward heaven.

Being the mother of Christ, she is the one closest to God, the first link between God and us, since with her ‘Fiat’ (Be it done to me) she became the instrument of making God become man in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

In a sense, we can say that for us to get to God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we have to go to Mary. She is the bridge we can use to go to Christ. Thus, we have this famous expression, “Ad Iesum per Mariam.” (To Jesus through Mary)

Because she is the mother of Christ who is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, we can also consider her as the mother of the entire humanity.

No wonder then that she has been given all the privileges any human person can have from God. She was conceived without original sin, she was sinless all throughout her life, she maintained her virginity, she was assumed into heaven body and soul upon her death.

She kept all these privileges intact without being spoiled by them, somehow correcting the example of our first parents who also were created in a state of original justice but which they lost through their sin.

She is the perfect human person, of whom no one is greater, according to one saint, except God himself. She is the perfect model for us, since of all humanity she is the one who is most identified with Christ himself. She is even called the Co-Redemptrix, because even if all of us are expected to be co-redeemers with Christ since we also have to do our part with Christ in our redemption, Mary co-redeemed with Christ is the most perfect way.

We really should develop a deep and abiding devotion to Mary. Like St. John who, after being told by the dying Christ to behold his mother (Mary), took her to his home and cared for her, (cfr. Jn 19,27) we too should do the same.

We have to be truly Marian to be truly Christian. That’s part of God’s will for us. We cannot go to Christ, we cannot understand him properly and cooperate with him in our redemption, if we do not go to Mary.