Pope Benedict XVI opened the New Year by presiding at a concelebrated mass in St. Peter's Basilica at 10 a.m. to mark the Solemnity of the Maternity of Mary as well ass the 41st World Day for Peace. Concelebrating were Cardinals Bertone and Martino; Mons. Fernando Filoni, deputy secretary of state; Mons. Dominique Mamberti, Secretary for external relations; and Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary-general of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Here is a translation of the Pope's homily:
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today we begin the new year, with Christian hope in hand. Let us begin by invoking divine blessing on this new year and imploring through the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, the gift of peace: for our families, for our cities, for the entire world.
With this wish, I greet all who are present here, starting with the distinguished ambassadors of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, who have gathered for this celebration on the occasion of World Day for Peace.
I greet Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, my Secretary of State, Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino and all the members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. I am particularly grateful to them for their commitment in spreading the message for the 2008 World Day for Peace which this year has the theme "The human family: A community of peace".
Peace. In the first Reading, taking from the book of Numbers, we heard the invocation: "May the Lord grant you peace" (6.26); may the Lord give peace to each of you, to your families, to the entire world.
We all aspire to live in peace, but true peace, that which was announced by the angels on Christmas night, is not simply a conquest by man or the fruit of political accords; it is above all a divine gift to be implored constantly, and at the same time, a commitment to be carried on with patience, always obedient to the commandments of the Lord.
This year, in the message for today's World Day for Peace, I wished to highlight the close relationship that exists between the family and the task of building peace in the world. The natural family, founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, is "the first and irreplaceable educator for peace". Precisely because of this, the family is 'the principal agent for peace' and "the denial or even the restriction of family rights, by obscuring the truth about man, threatens the very foundations of peace" (cfr Nos. 1-5).
Because mankind is a 'great family', if it wants to live in peace, it cannot
not be inspired by those values on which the familial community is founded and by which it is regulated.
The providential coincidence of various occasions urges us this year to an even more deeply felt effort to realize peace in the world.
Sixty years ago, in 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations made public the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Forty years ago, my venerated predecessor Paul VI celebrated the first World Day for Peace. This year, we also remember the 15th anniversary of the adoption by the Holy See of the Charter of Family Rights.
"In the light of these significant occasions" - I return here to the conclusion of my Message for today - "I invite every man and woman today to be more lucidly aware of his common belonging to the only human family and to commit himself so that coexistence on earth may always mirror ever more this conviction on which depends the establishment of a true and lasting peace."
Our thoughts today go naturally to Our Lady, whom we invoke today as the Mother of God. It was Pope Paul VI who transferred to January 1 the Feast of the Maternity of Mary, which used to be celebrated on October 11.
Before the liturgical reform which followed Vatican-II, January 1 commemorated the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day after his birth - as a sign of submission to the law, his official enrolment among the Chosen People - and the following Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.
We can see traces of these celebrations in the Gospel page which was just proclaimed, in which St. Luke says that eight days after he was born, the Baby was circumcised and given the name Jesus, "as he was called by the angel before being conceived in the womb of his mother" (Lk 2,21).
But the feast today, besides being a very important Marian feast, still contains something strongly Christologic, because, we might say, even before the Mother, it concerns the Son himself, Jesus who is true God and true man.
Paul refers to the mystery of Mary's divine maternity, the Theotokos, in his Letter to the Galatians. "When the fullness of time came," he wrote, "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law (6,4). In those few words, we find synthesized the mystery of the Incarnation of the eternal Word and the divine maternity of Mary. The great privilege of the Virgin was precisely to be the Mother of the Son who is God.
And so this Marian feast finds its most correct and most logical placement eight days after the Nativity. In fact, on that night in Bethlehem, "when she gave birth to her firstborn son" (Lk 2,7), the prophecies about the Messiah were fulfilled. "A Virgin shall conceive and bear a child", as Isaiah had pre-announced (7,14). "Behold, you will conceive and bear a child", the Angel Gabriel said to Mary (Lk 1,31). And once again, it was an Angel of the Lord, according to the evangelist Matthew - who, 'appearing in a dream to Joseph, reassured him, saying: "Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son..." (Mt 1, 20-21).
The title of Mother of God is the foundation for all the other titles with which Our Lady has been venerated and continues to be invoked by generation after generation, in the East and in the West.
References to the mystery of her divine maternity are found in many hymns and so many prayers of the Christian tradition, like a Marian antiphon during the Christmas season, Alma Redemptoris Nater, with which we pray: "
Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, Virgo prius ac posterius" – You, among the wonders of all Creation, have generated your Creator, ever virgin Mother."
Dear brothers and sisters, today we contemplate Mary, ever Virgin Mother of the Father's Only-begotten Son. Let us learn from her to welcome the Baby who was born for us in Bethlehem.
If in the Son born of her, we can recognize the eternal Son of God and welcome him as our only Savior, we can be truly said to be - and are - children of God: children in the Son. The Apostle wrote: "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption" (Gal 4,4).
The evangelist Luke repeats many times that Our Lady meditated silently on these extraordinary events in which God had involved her. We heard that, even in the brief Gospel passage that the liturgy offers us today: "And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart" )Lk 2,19).
The Greek verb used -
sumbállousa - literally means 'to put together' and makes us a think of a great mystery to be uncovered little by little. The Baby who cries in the manger, although apparently like all other babies in the world, is also at the same time completely different: he is the Son of God, he is God, true God and true man.
This mystery - the Incarnation of the Word and Mary's divine maternity - is great and certainly not easy to understand with human intelligence alone.
In Mary's school, we can catch with the heart what the eyes and the mind cannot succeed to perceive nor contain. It is about a gift so great that it is given to us to accept only on faith without understanding it all.
It is precisely in this path of faith that Mary comes to meet us, to be our guide and our support. She is a mother because she generated Jesus in her flesh. She is so, because she adhered totally to the will of the Father.
St. Augustine wrote: "Her own divine maternity would have been of no value to her if she had not borne Christ in her heart, with a destiny more fortunate than when she bore him in the flesh" (De sancta Virginitate, 3,3).
And in her heart, Mary continued to 'keep', to 'put together', all the successive events of which she would be witness as well as protagonist, until the death on the Cross and the resurrection of her Son Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, only by keeping in the heart - that is, keeping together and finding a unity in all that we live through - can we enter, following Mary, into the mystery of a God who became man out of love for us and calls us to follow him on the road of love - a love to be translated every day into generous service to our brothers.
May the New Year, which we trustingly begin today, be a time during which we can advance in that knowledge of the heart, which is the wisdom of the saints.
Let us pray so that, as we heard in the first Reading today, the Lord 'may make his face shine' on us, 'be gracious' to us (cfr Nm 6,24-7) and bless us. We can be sure of this: if we do not tire of looking for his face, if we don't yield to the temptation of discouragement and doubt, if - despite all the difficulties which we encounter - we remain always anchored to him, then we will experience the power of his love and his mercy.
May the fragile Baby whom the Virgin presented to the world today make us workers for peace, witnesses to him the Prince of Peace. Amen.