With Mary on Saturday

Mary offers us a new motherhood in a new superabundant fruitfulness in which she exercises her maternal care for the community as a whole and for each of its members. Mary’s fruitfulness is to make others fruitful in the Son. As spiritual mother, everywhere a person approaches her Son, everywhere a person is really seeking – whether faith, conversion, or vocation, she smooths the path. Because she has gone with the Son on all his paths, she knows all the paths that lead to him.

As we begin this new year, we commit ourselves to taking advantage of this maternal care, offered us by God who prepared Mary from all eternity to be his mother and then prepared her to be our mother, that her care and solicitude may shape our lives and lead us to her Son, who comes to us now to be consumed as bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist.

In his goodness, God not only did the incomprehensible by choosing one of our race to be his mother, but he has given her to be our mother also. Someone who knows, loves and assists us in our life with God with her maternal care and concern. Someone who knows God’s Son with an unmatched depth and intimacy and whose deepest wish is to lead us to him, accompanied by the Virgin Mother, let us renew our commitment to serve the Lord with a generous and pure heart.

Medieval statue of the Virgin and Child in a gallery at the Cloisters Museum, NY, sent to us by a friend. Excerpts from Father Timothy's Homily for New Year's Day.