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                                  Happy New Year from the CNY Marian Center!
The following is from:    Radio Vatican
Today’s   Feast of Mary, the Mother of God    is a very appropriate way to begin a new year. This celebration reminds us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, is also our Heavenly Mother.  Hence, our ideal motto for the New Year 2018 should be “Through Mary to Jesus!" This is an occasion to renew our devotion to Mary, who is also Mother of the Church because she is our spiritual mother — and we are the Church.  In 1970, Pope Paul VI instituted the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. In his encyclical on devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary,   Marialis Cultus, he wrote, "This celebration, assigned to Jan. 1 in conformity with the ancient liturgy of the city of Rome, is meant to commemorate the part played by Mary in this mystery of salvation. It is meant also to exalt the singular dignity which this mystery brings to the holy Mother … through whom we were found worthy … to receive the Author of life.” The solemnity shows the relationship of Jesus to Mary. It’s a perfect example of how we should venerate Mary under all of her titles and is a good foundation for our understanding of Mary’s place in Christology. The Church puts the feast of this solemnity on the first day of the New Year to emphasize the importance of Mary’s role in the life of Christ and of the Church. It is also the Octave Day of Christmas so we welcome and venerate the birth of Christ at the beginning and honor Mary, His mother at the end of the Christmas Octave.   We commemorate the various saints on different days of the year, but Mary is the most prominent of them all.  She has a special role and mission given to her by God. As Mother of our Redeemer and of the redeemed, she reigns as Queen at the side of Christ the King. She is a powerful intercessor for all of our needs here on earth. In celebrating her special feast day, we acknowledge this great gift for the Church and world; we call on her to be actively involved in our daily life; we imitate her virtuous life as a great inspiration; and we cooperate with all the graces we get through her. The Church observes this day also as the   World Day of Peace  and invites us to pray specially for peace in the world.
​Inspired by Pope St. John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris, Pope Paul VI instituted this feast in 1967.

Traditional Beliefs

This is a very ancient feast, which used to be celebrated on October 11th. Today’s feast answers the question, “Why do Catholics honor Mary?” Non-Christians sometimes believe  that we Catholics worship Mary as a goddess who gave birth to  our God.   Non-Catholic Christians argue that there is no Biblical basis for honoring Mary and that Catholics worship her and make her equal to God. They fail to  understand why we honor Mary  and name Churches and institutions after her.   They do not understand what we mean by calling her the Mother of God. The  truth is that we Catholics do not worship Mary as we worship, adore, God.   We honor her, respect her, love her and seek her intercession, praying, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners."   We do not,  ever, equate her with God nor replace God with her.  Rather, we honor her, primarily because God  honored her by choosing her to become the Mother of Jesus, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, when He took on our flesh and became Man.

Biblical Basis

 We learn the great truth that Mary is the Mother of God from St. Luke’s Gospel, in the message given by the angel to Mary: “You are going to be the mother of a Son and you will call Him Jesus, and He will be called the Son of the Most High."  Once she said yes, the Holy Spirit created in her womb the human nature that God the Son would assume. Since motherhood is of the person and not of the nature alone, and since Mary is the mother of Jesus, true God and true Man, then she is rightly called the Mother of God. After the angel had appeared to her and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary visited Elizabeth. At Mary's greeting Elizabeth said, "Why should this great thing happen to me, that my Lord’s mother comes to visit me?” [Lk 1:43]. The Holy Scriptures teach us that Jesus was both God and man.   John writes: "The Word became flesh and lived among us" [Jn 1:14].  St. Paul refers to this event when he writes to the Galatians, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman,” and as, "eternally begotten of the Father."  So the Bible teaches that Mary was the mother of the God-Man Jesus, not in the sense that she gave birth to Jesus as God, but in the sense that the Baby she bore had the nature of God and the nature of Man.

The Doctrine of the Church

Based on these references in the New Testament and on the traditional belief of the early Church, the Council of Ephesus affirmed in AD 431 that Mary was truly the Mother of God (Theotokos), because "according to the flesh" she gave birth to Jesus, Who was truly God as well as truly man from the first moment of His conception by Mary. The Council defined Mary as the Mother of God both to honor her and to safeguard the dogma that Jesus Christ is not just truly God but also truly man. The Nestorians – followers of Nestorius, the 5th-century archbishop of Constantinople – taught that Christ was two in one: the man Jesus and the Divine Son of God. This view was condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431 AD), which insisted that Jesus is one Person with two natures, Divine and human. The most emphatic way they could say this was to affirm that Mary was not just the mother of the man Jesus, but that she was the mother of God. This was to say that Christ was one person, not two. The word used was Theotokos (Greek for “God-bearer”). The Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), continued the use of this term, and it has become orthodox Christian teaching. Note that it is more a statement about Christ than about Mary – or rather, equally so. Icons of the Theotokos are common now in the West. Twenty years later, in AD 451, the Council of Chalcedon affirmed the Divine Motherhood of Mary as a Dogma, an official doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church.  Since Jesus is God, and Mary is his mother, she  is the Mother of God, the Mother of the Messiah and the Mother of  Christ, our Divine Savior.   We also learn from the Holy Scriptures and Sacred Tradition that God filled the mother of His only Son with all celestial graces, freed her at the moment of her conception from original sin through the future (prevenient) merits of the death of Jesus, allowed her to play an active role in the redemptive work of Jesus, and finally took her to Heaven, body and soul, after her death.  As He was dying on the cross,   Jesus gave us the precious gift of His own mother to be our Heavenly Mother.

​Why Did Jesus Give us His Mother?

 Jesus gave us his Mother so that she would be the Mother of all humanity.  After having considered the role of the Virgin Mary in the mystery of Christ and the Spirit, we should think about her role in the mystery of the Church.  We know that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ and, consequently, the Mother of God.  But she is also the Mother of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Because of this, the mission of Mary is totally inseparable from the mission of the Church.  And it should be clearly stated that the role of Mary, as Mother of all humanity, in no way eclipses or diminishes Christ.  On the contrary, her role can only help to clarify Christ’s role. This is one of the reasons God decided to share his Mother with us.
Many non-Catholic Christians really don't pay much attention at all to the Blessed Virgin Mary.   We Catholics, on the other hand, recognize her as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. We know that Jesus took her up to Heaven, body and soul, as soon as her earthly mission was over. This is the Dogma of the Assumption, defined by the Church with an infallible papal definition. It makes sense that the woman who bore God in her womb should be borne by God into Heaven and not left in a grave to turn back into dust. In fact, in the Old Testament, the Queen of the Kingdom of Israel was always the Queen Mother. One of King Solomon's first acts when his father David gave him the throne was to raise his mother Bathsheba to his side, to be the royal Queen - a mini-Assumption. There was a practical reason for this tradition: Old Testament Kings used to marry more than one wife, but the King had only one Mother, so she became Queen. But there was also a deeper, prophetic meaning at work. God was already planning to send the Messiah through a Virgin, to involve a Mother intimately in the Redemption, just as a mother (Eve) had been involved intimately in the Fall (original sin). God did it that way on purpose. God gives his Mother a special place in the ongoing history of salvation because He wants to tell us something about His love for us.  His love is faithful, strong and indestructible, because He is our Father.  But it is also gentle, patient, and ever-present, always watching over us - like a Mother. Mary, our heavenly Queen and spiritual Mother, reminds us of this. (E-Priest).

Messages for Life

1) Let us strive to be pure and holy like our Heavenly Mother.  All mothers want their children to inherit or acquire their good qualities. Our Heavenly Mother is no exception.  With Joseph, she succeeded in training the Child Jesus, so that He grew in holiness and in “favor before God and man.” Hence, our best way of celebrating this feast and honoring our Heavenly Mother would be to promise her that we will practice her virtues of Faith, obedience, purity and humble service. In this way, we will be trying to become the saintly sons and daughters of our Heavenly Mother, the Holy Mother of God.
2) We need our Heavenly Mother’s prayers to have a better physical life and spiritual life in the New Year: Let us ask for our Heavenly Mother’s help so that we may glorify God with a healthier physical and spiritual life and a better appreciation of life in a culture of death. We need a Super-Mother like Jesus’ mother Mary to stop millions of pregnant women from killing their babies by abortion, and to encourage nations to enact and implement laws to stop homicides, suicides, “mercy”-killing and mass-murders by terrorist and fanatic groups.
3) We need to honor Mary as the mother of Jesus: “We honor Mary by actively participating in today’s Mass and in all the Marian feasts of the Church throughout the year. In these Masses and at other times, we give Mary hyperdulia, that is, highest honor, because of the gifts of grace God granted her and because of the way she responded to these gifts. We also honor her in all the forms of Marian prayer we say: The Rosary, the Angelus, the Regina Caeli, the Hail Holy Queen, the Memorare, and so on. These are prayers we should pray so often we have them memorized. We can honor Mary by cultivating an interior life like hers. Mary meditated on, that is, thought about and prayed over, the events of her life in relation to God’s plan of salvation. We are participants in God’s plan of salvation, too. We are God’s instruments and fellow workers in God’s kingdom. Everything that happens to us has a good meaning, and it is up to us to try to discover and appreciate it. Her words at the wedding feast of Cana reveal her basic orientation, which we can apply to ourselves: ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ We can honor Mary by praying for her intercession.” (DHO).
4) Three ways to make the New Year meaningful (William Barclay): a) something to dream, b) something to do, and c) someone to love.  “I have a dream’” said Martin Luther King. We should all have a noble plan of action (dream a noble dream), for every day in the New Year.  We need to remember the proverb: “Cherish your yesterdays, dream your tomorrows, but live your today." It has been truly said that an idle mind is the devil's workshop. We must not be barren fig trees, nor barren branches in God’s vineyard.  We must be always engaged, doing good for others and loving the men and women we encounter in daily life, for they are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This becomes easier when we make God the center of our life and realize His presence in all the people around us.  Let us light a candle instead of blaming the darkness around us. Just as the moon borrows the sun’s light to illuminate the earth, we must radiate the Light of God shining within us.
Let’s pray the prayer of Dag Hammarskjold: “Lord, for all that has been, Thanks! For all that will be, Yes!”
​Have a Happy New Year, overflowing with a "Yes" to God our Father, to the Lord Jesus our Brother and to the Holy Spirit our Advocate and our Guide in every good deed His grace suggests! O, our God and our Hope, glory to You!
A shoeshine boy was plying his trade in New York’s Grand Central Station. A silver medal danced at his neck as he slapped his shine cloth, again and again, across a man’s shoes. “Sonny,” said the man curiously, “what’s the hardware around your neck?” It’s a medal of the mother of Jesus,” the boy replied. “Why her medal?” said the man. “She’s no different from your mother.” “Could be,” said the boy, “but there’s a real big difference between her son and me.” The boy’s devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, invites me to ask: What role does Mary play in my life? How might she play an even bigger role? (Mark Link in Vision 2000). (Source: Homilies of Fr. Anthony Kadavil)​

Link to the original homily on Radio Vatican