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Reflection on the Nativity of the Mother of God

  • Fr Robin Gibbons

The roots of our own religious faith are interesting, often it simply depends on family upbringing and education, though a number of us meet faith later on as adults perhaps as a result of an encounter or contact with friends who help influence us.

My own religious life has been an interesting journey, and has many different strands, but as I get older I can see where the strongest influences came from and a lot of this is from France where my maternal Grandmother was born and where my siblings and I spent many happy holidays with the French family. We are six and the others have different experiences, but as the oldest I have deep memories of church in the village full of relatives, of the gentle and faithful curé, Abbe Pelletier who was one of the inspirations behind my vocation as a priest, his faithful service of his flock and his deep commitment to them inspired me greatly.

But I also remember and still embrace the prayers and witness of the sisters in the convent of the Clarisses, founded in the 15th century by St Colette and where her relics remain still as a ‘lieu’ of pilgrimage and prayer. This convent is next to the great church of the Collegiale of St Hippolyte in Poligny, where the great 15th c building, its history and liturgy such as the Sunday sung Mass, drew and inspired me as it does still.

But above all else in terms of piety I owe to this milieu my own love of Our Lady, Notre Dame, because France is suffused with loving devotion to her, the statues, wayside shrines and feast days, are all something I owe to this land and people because the whole local church is suffused and connected with devotion to her cult.

Faith is not only taught in catechism it is learnt in the practice of our people. Love of Our Lady, Notre Dame, is a hallmark of our faith as Catholics, both in East and West. I sense more and more as I walk onwards into old age, her presence in my own faith and in those around me too. She has always been a walker with us on the pilgrimage of life, not in the sense of her son the Good Shepherd who accompanies us in a different manner, but as one who calls us to be gentle with each other, reminds us of our times of refreshment, calls us to rest together, and above all to share that Eucharist of common love in simple tasks like resting, encouraging, listening.

When we meditate and reflect on the passion and death of Christ, Mary is with us, but in a way we can grasp and understand. She is with us in the sorrow of bereavement and of suffering, weeping as one who knows exactly what is going on, but reaching out in her role as intercessor and helper as well as Mother. These are the images of her we find in icon and statue, in hymn and prayer. As a theologian I sense that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have what we can call a ‘corpus’ of love for her, stretching back to the earliest ages of Christianity. The Mother of Jesus is after all equal to the apostles, but greater in that she is the one chosen to bear and give birth to the son of God. She is the first of the Saints in our New Testament sense; she is mother to us, sister for us, and the example of loving self-giving, as the handmaid of the Lord, and all because of our relationship to her son Jesus.

Nobody knows the actual date of Mary’s birthday, but it doesn’t matter, the feast first began to be celebrated in the 6th century but its source is much older, for the earliest documented version is found in the Protoevangelium of James that dates from about 150CE. Somewhere in that is a link to Mary’s own life, parentage and history, we honour in name her parents as Hannah (Anne) and Joachim, often we find images of Mary with her Mother Anne, a loving detail reminding us that our history is bound up in the story of Mary.
Let us honour her with joyful celebration, as the Byzantine troparion for her feast sings:

“Your Nativity, O Virgin,
Has proclaimed joy to the whole universe!
The Sun of Righteousness, Christ our God,
Has shone from You, O Theotokos!
By annulling the curse,
He bestowed a blessing.
By destroying death,
He has granted us eternal Life”.

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