By: Fr. Roy Cimagala
NEW Year’s Day, of course, liturgically coincides with the Solemnity of the divine maternity of our Lady. We should be reminded that we have to make ourselves new again spiritually and morally under the guidance of the Mother of God and our Mother also.
Every New Year may make us a year older, but spiritually and morally, it should make us younger until we reach that point that we will forever be new and young, as we head toward our goal of eternity, where everything is new, where there will be no more past nor future. That’s where time is swallowed up by the eternal present.
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.
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)
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.
On our part, we just have to make sure that we take care of our spiritual and moral life since it is through them that we are enabled to receive God’s grace that is the sole principle of eternity. Everything else in our life should get its life and purpose from our spiritual and moral dimensions of our life.
We need to deepen our faith in God’s love for us, which should be shown in deeds. It’s in this way that we can participate in Christ’s victory over sin and death with his resurrection to eternal life. That victory will always make us new as St. Paul once affirmed: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away. Behold, all things are made new.” (2 Cor 5,17) In another passage, St. Paul said: “For we are buried together with him by baptism into death, that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in the newness of life.” (Rom 6,4)
We need to learn the ways of this “newness of life” offered by Christ through his passion, death and resurrection or the Paschal mystery that summarizes everything that he did and said to save us.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
