In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Virgin most pure, Mother most chaste,
St. Joseph, our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Well, let me be the first one to wish you a blessed and happy New Year.
As the Church always begins its liturgical, you might say, celebration of the New Year
by always re-consecrating and consecrating this New Year to Our Lady
by saying,
Celebrating the first day of the New Year on her Solemnity of the Mother of God.
And if you listen to the Divine Office that we did before Mass and during the readings today,
you hear a lot of the Virgin Mother, her virginity, and her maternity.
This great sign, which we heard so much about in the days of Advent, which would point out to us,
the Virgin Mother,
the Mother who was ever virgin, but yet fruitful,
would be the great sign that would point out to us who Emmanuel is, God with us.
And it is important that God give us this sign,
because the only way we could recognize His Son as the Son of God
is if there is some miraculous sign that indicates Him to us,
and that sign, of course, is His Virgin Mother.
We know that, as we have up there in our windows,
the burning bush of the Old Testament was seen as a type of Our Lady's divine maternity,
that she was like the bush, was burning and on fire, but not consumed.
So Our Lady was a mother, but yet still a virgin.
And this is the thing that would always, you might say,
be a source of stumbling block for those who would not recognize this as a miracle.
Even today, you might say, scientists are always thinking that they can explain everything.
And I saw a video some time ago on Eucharistic miracles.
And one of the Eucharistic miracles was that some blood appeared in an ablution bowl
when they went to dissolve a host that had been left on the,
they found it on the floor of the church.
And so the priest put it in the ablution bowl,
for it to dissolve, so he could dispose of it properly,
because he didn't want it to, someone to consume it.
He thought it should be dissolved in water,
and then he would dispose of it once it was no longer the appearance or the accidents of bread.
But instead, this blood appeared in the ablution bowl,
and they took it to the priest,
and they took it to scientists,
and they said, well, it is such and such type blood,
and it's this and that, and it's still living.
It's not blood that is past its, still has oxygen in it or whatever.
And so scientists thought, well, let's examine the DNA,
because you know, we're all, everything's in the DNA these days.
And so they, when they went to examine the DNA,
it's as if God put a veil over it.
They can't see the DNA.
It's as if there's fog there.
They can't see past, as if God's saying, you can't go any farther.
You have to use faith to believe.
And science can't prove it, and science shouldn't need to know.
You should have faith.
And even when they went to examine the DNA of the blood
that is in the Miracle Lanciano, the Eucharistic miracle there,
the same thing, they can't see the DNA.
God is wanting to,
to keep that mystery forever until we get to heaven,
to understand that Our Lady, as we hear in the liturgy,
it says that, in the Office of Reading said that,
the angel said that the child will be born from her, not born in her,
to show that everything that God would take for His human nature,
He would take from His mother.
It wasn't going to come from outside somewhere.
That's why even we hear in the Gospel today,
at the end it says,
when eight days were completed for His circumcision,
He was named Jesus, the name given Him by the angel
before He was conceived in the womb.
And as I have said many times at this passage,
this phrase, conceived in the womb,
only appears twice in all of Sacred Scripture,
and it's in the Gospel of Luke.
And Luke, we know, was a doctor by profession.
So, and he was inspired by the Holy Spirit when he wrote that.
And that he chose to say that expression,
conceive in your womb, conceive in the womb.
And that expression is never used anywhere else in the Old Testament
or New Testament in any way in reference to a conception of a child,
only twice, and it has to do with the conception of our Lord.
To show that just as our Lord didn't open the womb when He entered in,
it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that He was made,
that Our Lady was made fruitful,
so it was no need for the womb to be opened.
And so the conception took place within the womb,
in a closed womb.
And likewise, He would issue forth from that womb,
while it still remained closed,
that He would not disturb Our Lady's virginity,
because that was to be the great sign,
and that He wanted to preserve
her virginal integrity,
to symbolize Our Lady's great virginal purity
and integrity of her body and soul,
the Immaculate Conception.
That that virginal, pristine human nature that she has and has,
and will always have, will never be disturbed,
will be left in its way in which God intended,
as a great sign to us.
And so today as we, on this first day of the year,
we call to mind these great mysteries,
and especially this mystery of the Virgin Mother,
that we realize that God has left this sign for us
because He loves us.
He wants us to realize how great is the Mother of God.
And we can never fathom that,
Saint Maximilian Kolbe says,
that mystery.
What does it mean to be the Mother of God?
Only God knows the fullness of that mystery.
You have to be God to understand
and comprehend fully the divine maternity.
But He has left us this mother,
that is not only His mother,
but He's also made her our mother.
For we hear, you know,
that from the cross our Lord said to John,
Behold your mother.
And so we must once again,
maybe on this first day of the year,
reconsecrate ourselves
and take her into our home
like the faithful disciple,
like the disciple whom Jesus loved,
whom John represented there at the foot of the cross.
It seems to me that that's what we need to do
individually and collectively as a church,
is to take again and once again,
and renew our consecration
and our dedication,
whatever word you want to use,
our complete abandonment
and gift of ourselves to Our Lady.
We must do that every year and every day,
for it's the only way we're going to
achieve our salvation,
as Saint Maximilian Kolbe says,
in the surest, easiest, and quickest way.
And the liturgy
and the church's liturgical celebration
wants to point that out.
First day of the new year,
who do we call to mind?
The Mother of God
on the eighth day of the Octave of Christmas
to show that the Virgin Mother
is always going to be there with her child,
the divine child, Jesus.
And that just as our Lord came into the world
as Son of Man,
became the Son of Man
by becoming the Son of Mary,
and the two persons who were involved in that,
in our Lord becoming the Son of Man,
in the Incarnation,
was the Holy Spirit, the divine person,
and Our Lady, the human person.
Those two cooperated,
worked together for that great mystery,
the Incarnation, to take place.
And since we celebrate it,
towards the end of the Octave of Christmas,
the divinization of man,
man becoming and sharing in the divine nature,
man can only become a Son of God
by adoption
if he has those two persons involved,
the Holy Spirit
and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Those two are involved in that work
in each and every one of us.
That we became a Son of God,
a child of God,
it is to be attributed to
the working of the Holy Spirit
and His spouse,
the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God.
And so, therefore,
the Church, in its liturgy,
doesn't want us to forget
the importance of the Virgin Mother
for us individually or for the Church.
And in these times in which we live,
which seem to be times in which evil has
reared its ugly head
and is trying to
persecute the Church and the faithful,
we need to turn to her,
even more so.
If we want peace in the world,
the only way we're going to have peace
is if we once again turn to Our Lady,
the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In his book, John Senior,
the famous Catholic professor
at Kansas University
who converted so many students
at the University of Kansas to Catholicism,
and all he taught them was history,
but he taught them history according to
the true meaning of history.
And one of those converts is now
the Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska,
Bishop James Conley,
who received his faith
and was converted because he went to
a secular university
and attended his class.
And John Senior writes in his book
The Darkness of Egypt, he says
that the Blessed Virgin Mary
is the key to the reordering,
and the renewal of society.
And he said because it's always been the case,
when the barbarians invaded Rome,
and the society, the high society
that the Roman civilization was,
and it was brought down,
and the barbarians invaded,
and they thought, wow,
there goes all of the things
that the Church hoped for,
that they would be able to
build upon that civilization.
Instead, Our Lady,
in devotion to the Mother of God,
helped domesticate those barbarians.
It's through devotion to Our Lady
that the men learned to be gentlemen,
learned to be knights,
and that the women learned to be
virgins and mothers,
through devotion to the Mother of God.
And today, we need that same
Blessed Mother to teach and educate
the new pagans,
that have been brought up
because they haven't been catechized
or received the faith.
And we need her, again,
to domesticate and to civilize
the new pagans that are with us today,
the neo-barbarians.
And we need to also ask her to help us
to be those instruments,
to be those witnesses,
that we can be her help,
in doing and accomplishing that work.
Because Our Lady is going to use us
for that work,
if we just let her,
if we give ourselves to her
totally and completely.
So today, let us,
on this first day of the year,
thank God for this great gift
that He has given to us
in the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and to thank Him for
making His Mother our Mother,
and to,
and to re-consecrate ourselves to her
as the way in which we can give her
the greatest and most perfect form of thanks.
As Father Neubert says,
that the greatest and most perfect form
of hyperdulia,
that is, devotion to the Mother of God,
is total consecration to her.
True devotion,
true and total devotion,
is consecration to her.
And we all should want to give to Our Lady,
our Mother,
that perfect and highest form of
praise and honor,
by consecrating ourselves to her,
and doing so because Jesus was the first
to do so,
who gave Himself totally to her
in becoming her child.
And I heard in a tape
that our Lord reveled
in that title.
He always referred to Himself
as the Son of Man.
Why did He refer to Himself
as the Son of Man?
Because in becoming a Son of Man,
He became a Son of Mary.
And He used,
in the Gospel of Luke alone,
twenty-one, twenty-nine times,
He referred to Himself
as the Son of Man.
So much did He love Our Lady
and love being her Son,
that He relished that title,
Son of Man.
Let us truly relish
that title, too,
that we have all received at baptism,
being sons and daughters of Mary.
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Closed Captioning provided by WKNO-MEMPHIS.