Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Previous Years: 2023 || 2022 || 2021 || 2020 || 2019 || 2018 || 2017
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/a-fresh-start-with-mary/
Transcript
I was texting with a college friend of mine the other day, and he was positing that we should change the feast day of our country from the Immaculate Conception, which is December 8th to December 12th with Our Lady of Guadalupe—and his arguments were sound. He said, first of all, Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of all the Americas, so it would make sense to take her as a national patron as well. He also suggested that much of the strength of the US church today comes from our Hispanic parishioners. That’s a lot of the reason why the Catholic Church hasn’t shown the same demographic collapse as the mainline Protestant churches in this country. And I said these were good arguments, but he didn’t realize why the Immaculate Conception was the patroness of our country to begin with.
My understanding of it is that once the Church recognized that the Immaculate Conception was a truth of our faith, the US bishops recognized in it an analogy for the founding narrative of our country. The founding narrative of our country is that we were a fresh start. We were leaving behind the problems of Europe, all of the politics and the wars and everything else that had been built up over so many centuries—and we were starting afresh. And the Immaculate Conception, Mary being conceived without sin, was a theological analogy for what we aspire to be as a country, which was a new start apart from sin.
Now, the fact that the feast of the Mother of God is on January 1st is far more related to Christmas than it is to the fact that it’s the beginning of the year. In Christianity, we do octaves. An octave is seven days, but it also counts both days on either side, so, it’s actually eight days. For the octave of Easter, for example, Easter is always on a Sunday and we celebrate it until the next Sunday (which John Paul the Second has named Divine Mercy Sunday). And so, we have this, this analogy, this completion of the time. Similarly, before Vatican II, there used to be an octave of Pentecost. Pentecost was too big a day to celebrate once, so we celebrated it until the eighth day. The eighth day in Christianity represents the new creation. It represents the next first day of creation, the day of resurrection. And so similarly Christmas is too big a day to celebrate for one day. We celebrate Christmas for eight days, ending on the eighth day as the feast of the Mother of God—Mary being the moon to Jesus’s sun, always reflecting what her Son does. We have the great celebration of Christ, and then eight days later, the celebration of His mother. I don’t know if it’s providence or coincidence; it doesn’t really matter. The feast of the Mother of God has been on January 1st for so long that it is helpful for us to remember today is not just Mary’s Day, but it’s a day of new beginnings. And Mary and new beginnings are not disconnected from each other. Like I said, Mary being the Immaculate Conception, she represents for us a new beginning, a new beginning for humanity, a new beginning apart from sin, a new beginning restored in the grace of God. That’s something many of us want all the time. It is helpful for us as sinful human beings to say, I need a time. I need a moment to start over. I need to put behind me the mistakes and the problems, and I need to resolve something new. Even those apart from religion like to make New Year’s resolutions because they know their sinfulness, they know their need to improve, and they pick this day to do it. But as Christians we have particular power in that desire. First, we have the sacraments. When we decide to start over, we have the grace of God to assist us. We have the Eucharist to give us strength, and we have confession, which gives us not just a day that we choose, but it gives us the true cleansing of God. It gets rid of all of those sins in actuality, not just in our mind. They are gone. We can start over afresh. And we also have a powerful patroness. We have Mary, the Mother of God, the new Eve, the Immaculate Conception, the one who represents for us what we all desire, which is a fresh start for our humanity. And she doesn’t just represent this to us, she prays for us. If you need a powerful intercessor in your corner because you want to start something fresh, you want to resolve something new. You want to begin again. Ask the Mother of God for her prayers because that’s who she is. She is the fresh start for humanity. She is the one who lives perfectly into the new creation inaugurated by her Son. There are a lot of different ways to articulate the good news. What do we mean by the gospel? But today, I would say the good news is that we are not our sins. We are not our mistakes. We are not our weaknesses. We are the beloved children of God to whom He gives the power to start again at any time, at any moment, whenever we want, with whatever we want. Aided by the prayers of the saints and particularly His Mother.
Fr. Moore 