Mary, the Holy Mother of God
Thursday, January 1, 2026
St. James Cathedral (10:00am)

My friends, we come together on this eighth day, this Octave of Christmas, to celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. On this first day of the New Year, we also celebrate the World Day of Prayer for Peace. These days of the Christmas Season are all of the same fabric - celebrating the Word-Made-Flesh.
 
What we began on the evening of December 24th, and continued this past Sunday with the Feast of the Holy Family, continues today, and through the Feast of the Epiphany next Sunday, and finishing with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord on the following Sunday, January 11. All of these celebrations help us to unpack what it is we celebrate at Christmas. And, while our focus shifts today to honor Mary, we do so because of who she is in relationship to Jesus Christ.
 
This ancient feast has its theological roots in the conclusion reached at an Ecumenical Council of the Church, held in 431 A.D., in Ephesus. That Council declared that Mary is not only the mother of Jesus, and the mother of the Christ. She is certainly that, but she is more.
 
At the Council of Ephesus, Mary received the title of the Mother of God. The significance of this title is the affirmation that God really became a human being and was born in space and time. So Mary’s title, Theotokos, in Greek, reflects belief about Jesus – that he is truly God, come in the flesh. Mary, under this title is the “God-bearer.”
 
Today’s gospel continues the passage from Luke that we read at the Mass at Night on Christmas Eve. Today we hear that the shepherds did what the angels instructed them to do, and they went forth and found Mary, Joseph and their new born son. Then they went out, glorifying and praising God, spreading the good news, and Luke tells us that all who heard them were amazed.
 
The actions of the shepherds can be a model for us in the midst of our Christmas celebrations. We too come here to do what the Lord told us to do, to remember Him in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Here we encounter the living Christ once again in the Eucharist and in this gathering of faith. And we are sent from here to spread the Good News of what we have heard and seen and touched and tasted.
 
That Good News is that Jesus, the name given him by the angel before his birth, is indeed the Savior. It is his holy name that blesses us in this church today. Just as God promised to bless the Israelites through Moses and Aaron, so now God blesses us, through the full revelation of that name, in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. 
 
St. Paul reassures us of this blessing, in the Letter to the Galatians, calling us heirs, daughters and sons of the one Jesus called “Abba.” The Spirit of God has been poured into our hearts, Paul tells us, so that we too might have the same kind of intimacy with God that Jesus enjoys.
 
It is that intimacy, that nearness of God, the Word-Made-Flesh, that comes to us through Mary, the Mother of God. We honor her today as the one given the great privilege of being the God-bearer for all humanity.
 
We gather here, around the Table of the Lord on this Octave of Christmas, to be nourished by the Word-Made-Flesh, and to be sent out from here to be God-bearers ourselves, bringing God’s presence to our world.
 
Finally, on this day World Day of Prayer for Peace, we celebrate the beginning of a New Year by praying for the fullness of God’s peace to be revealed.
 
In his first New Years message as Pope, Leo XIV writes, “Dear brothers and sisters… let us open ourselves to peace! Let us welcome it and recognize it, rather than believing it to be impossible and beyond our reach. Peace is more than just a goal; it is a presence and a journey.”
 
The Holy Father calls us on this journey of what he calls an “unarmed and disarming” peace. He points to the child Jesus as God’s message of this unarmed peace. The Pope writes:
 
“The mystery of the Incarnation … begins in the womb of a young mother and is revealed in the manger in Bethlehem. “Peace on earth,” sing the angels, announcing the presence of a defenseless God, in whom humanity can discover itself as loved only by caring for him (cf. Lk 2:13-14).”
 
In a few moments you and I will once again become bearers of God’s presence through the bread and wine we share. We will take him into ourselves so he can feed us from within with his loving and peaceful presence.
 
May the Body and Blood of Christ nourish us so that we may go out from this place proclaiming the Good News and bearing his presence to a world so in need of his unarmed and disarming peace.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni