Mary, Mother of God

January 1 closes the octave of Christmas by naming the mystery the Church has been celebrating for eight days: the child born in Bethlehem is God, and the woman who bore him is truly the Mother of God. The Greek word the Council of Ephesus defended in 431 is Theotokos, God-bearer. Nestorius was willing to call Mary the mother of Christ, but not the mother of God, as if the Son she bore were only a man later joined to the Word. The council answered that the one born of her is the eternal Son, one Person in two natures. To refuse her the title Mother of God is to split Christ.

For many centuries the Latin Church kept this day as the Circumcision of the Lord, eight days after the Nativity, when Jesus received the name the angel had given. That Gospel is still read. The 1969 reform of the calendar restored the ancient Roman title of the octave, Mary the Mother of God, without discarding the circumcision or the giving of the name. The day is also the World Day of Peace, begun by Pope Paul VI in 1968. Peace here is not a slogan beside the feast. It is the fruit of the Prince of Peace, received in the flesh.

In the United States this solemnity is a holy day of obligation. The conference of bishops, with the approval of the Holy See, abrogates that obligation when January 1 falls on a Saturday or a Monday, so that the precept is not doubled against the Sunday. The solemnity itself is still celebrated. Christmas and the Immaculate Conception are not lifted by that Saturday-or-Monday rule. A Catholic who is dispensed from the extra precept is not dispensed from keeping Sunday.

The feast sits inside Christmas Time, in white vestments, with the Gloria. It is not the start of a new devotion that leaves Bethlehem behind. The preface and the prayers still speak of the Word made flesh. Mary is honored because of the child. The Church does not turn January 1 into a feast of Mary in isolation from Jesus.

The first reading is the blessing of Aaron from Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you… The Lord let his face shine upon you.” The Church hears that priestly blessing as fulfilled when the face of God shines in the face of the child. The second reading, from Galatians, says God sent his Son, born of a woman, so that we might receive adoption. The Gospel is Luke’s account of the shepherds, the name Jesus, and Mary keeping all these things in her heart.

The collect asks that we may experience the intercession of the Mother of God, through whom we have received the author of life. The creed is professed. The day has the rank of a solemnity, so the Gloria is sung and the liturgical color is white.