January 1, 2026, Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God;
Eighth Day in the Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord
Lectionary #18, Luke 2: 16-21
Scripture
The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told to them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.
When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
Reflection by Fr. Donald Paradis, M.S.
Reality must always be plumbed at new depths because true worth and value are determined with reference to God alone. Horizons must ever be broadened. The entire universe is an all-embracing Epiphany of God-Creator. Ours is an expanding universe. Our tendency, especially when we reach a certain age, is to shrinkage, to a narrowing of horizons.
We can tend to care more and more about less and less. More easily aggravated, annoyed by little things. A loss to others, this narrowing of outlook, this shriveling of interests and concerns, is a significant loss to ourselves as well.
Our world is infinitely bigger than we are. Our life is bigger than we are. We are part of something immense: the universe, the world, the Mystical Body of Christ.
In our prayer of quiet … our thinking, reflecting, pondering, contemplating . . . our hearts being drawn into the very Heart of God … more and more are we repulsed by biased, mean-spirited, exclusionary judgments. We are inwardly taught – in our prayer of quiet – to eliminate the words foreign, foreigners, strangers from our vocabulary. If our primary frame of reference is God, Maker and Creator of all, we should always need to ask: Foreign to what? Foreign to whom?
In our conversations with others, we extend to others – in ever-widening circles – the hospitality of our minds, our views, our lives. We all bring pieces of that truth, a truth that encompasses, but surely surpasses, us all, to the table where viewpoints and convictions and values are shared.
Since Jesus was born, and grew to his full stature and died, everything has continued to move forward “because Christ is not yet fully formed” (Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 4:15-16): he has not yet gathered about him the last folds of his robe of flesh and love, which is made up of his faithful followers.
In the guise of a tiny baby in its mother’s arms, obeying the great laws of birth and infancy, you came, Lord Jesus, to dwell in my infant-soul; and then, as you reenacted in me your growth through the Church, that same humanity which once was born, which once was contemplated by amazed shepherds and dwelt in Palestine began now to spread out gradually everywhere, without destroying anything, your presence penetrated every other presence about me.
Seeing the woman or man of prayer immobile, seeing the mystic rapt in prayer, some may perhaps think that their activity is in abeyance or has left the earth; they are mistaken. Nothing in the world is more intensely alive and active than purity, prayer, and that inner communion which hangs like an unmoving light between the universe and God.
Through the serene transparency of the contemplatives in our midst flow the waves of creative power, charged with the energy and vitality of sheer grace. What else but this was the Virgin Mary? What else but this is the Virgin Mary?
On her Solemnity, we join with the Mother of God in praying: “I love you, Lord Jesus, because of the multitude who shelter within you and whom, if one clings to you, one can hear with all the other beings murmuring, pondering, praying, weeping. They are the folds of your robe of flesh and love, your faithful followers.”
La Salette Invocation
Our Lady of La Salette, reconciler of sinners,
pray without ceasing for us who have recourse to you.
