Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - January 1st 2018 - Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God

"The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!* (Numbers 6:24-26.)

We hear these words of blessing often, and they are wonderful words to use but just maybe we need to link them in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to Mary the Theotokos. If anybody was blessed by these words it was she and that should give us hope! Why?

The older I get the more I find in Mary a comfort and a help for my faith, often battered by the winds of people's demands, that's ministry, one deals with the faith-filled but also the faith-searching and also the faith-lost. It's difficult to hear the complaints of those who have found in the Church anything but good support, whose lives have been wrecked by those who should know better but seem to think they know how God thinks, or alas who have abused the trust placed in them.

I for one cannot claim that I know the mind of God, but in my ministry I look more to the Mary of the Gospels, the one who pointed out people's needs at Cana, the person who faced with the nuclear option of God's demand at the Incarnation, pondered, faced her fears and anxieties and only then said: ''I am the handmaid of the Lord". That brings me back to the why? How was Mary blessed, why is she an inspiration for us today?

Firstly I think because a look at the scriptural Mary strips away layers of piety, good for some, but indigestible for others. Here she is given to us in sketches, glimpses, hints, colours that are added to the story of Salvation. She meets us at important moments and always, as in iconography, points or guides us to her son. And here the collective moment of this feast hits home, she is Mother, she is sister, she is the God-bearer and that is important, for her ancient Greek title Theotokos spells it out clearly, yes she gave birth to Jesus, Emmanuel, but in doing so she gives birth to the Word made flesh, not simply the Christ but the eternal Word who as St John says "dwelt amongst us".

Too often Mary is portrayed in sentimental tones, reduced to a rather passive cipher, and yes men are to blame, particularly clergy who for some reason want to keep her power in check. But she cannot be held in check for she is one with us, first amongst the saints Mary battles on for us. Maybe it is my own French inspired piety but Notre Dame for me, is a woman of many parts, of Joy, of Hope, of help, but blessed is she by God, our true friend and sister to whom I can whisper my most intimate thoughts and know that in her I too am looked upon kindly by God who will give me peace.

Lectio Divina

Paul Claudel
Mary, Vehicle of the Promise

The promise was not given to man but to woman. It is to her that petition must be made; it is in her womb that the seed of redemption germinates. As she was the instrument of the fall-felix culpa!-she is the proprietress of salvation. It is her duty to justify to God that creation which, through her, was severed from him. Generation follows generation, and at last on our disinherited soil there springs forth amid the thorns the precious lily of the Immaculate Conception. When man falls, it is to her (and she was not absent when he was pulled from the mire) that God turns to remake man in his image. It is to her that he chooses to surrender himself as spiritual prisoner of his own clay. (Accompagnements, 140)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!