Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today is the beginning of the New Year.
The Church gathers her children to ask God's blessing for the New Year and to thank Him for the graces of the past year.
As we ask for this blessing, we remember the source of all blessings bestowed on mankind, the union of God and Mary in the Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Every blessing comes to us from Christ, the God-man, and every blessing comes to us through Mary, the Mother of God.
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Elizabeth exclaimed.
We are blessed through these two blessed ones, as God promised to Abraham.
In your offspring, or your seed, singular, that is, Jesus, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
The priestly blessing in the first reading asks God, at the end of it, to grant peace, and today is World Peace Day.
Peace is certainly one of the blessings most desired by a world plagued by wars and discord in various places.
But what is peace?
Saint Augustine tells us that the peace of all things is the tranquility of order, and the order, or the relevant order, is that proper to the thing whose peace we consider, whether it be an animal in peace, because it has been well nourished, or a human whose peace is of a higher order, a family, a city, a country, or the whole world.
Where there is order, there is peace, and therefore peace is not just an absence of conflict.
Having everything in order produces well-being.
When order reigns in a family, for example, everyone does his duty, and not stopping at what justice requires in love also helps to bear the burdens of others.
Now what most disturbs order among men is sin, that is, disobedience to the eternal law, to God's law.
Therefore, as Isaiah says, the effect of righteousness will be peace, because righteousness is the observance of God's law, it puts everything in order.
Through the same prophet, God lamented, O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
These abundant goods come to those who observe God's commandments, who live by his law.
Among the various sins that create disorder and disturb peace, Mother Teresa called abortion the greatest destroyer of peace today, because, she said, if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me?
There is nothing between.
However, every sin disturbs the right order of things, and at Fatima our Lady said that wars are punishments for the sins of men.
So if we want peace, we should fight sin, and in ourselves first of all, because we have more control over ourselves than anyone else.
But we cannot conquer sin except with the help of grace, and grace comes only from Christ our Redeemer.
Through it have no grace and no peace were it not for the Mother of God, who cooperated in the incarnation and redemption.
For what did the angels say to the shepherds?
Glory to God in the highest, and unearth peace to those with whom he is pleased.
He is pleased with those who are in his grace.
Grace is the same thing as favor, except that with God, that favor has an ontological reality.
It is something that actually exists in us, because God is our Creator.
The prophet Micah foretold, he shall be their peace.
Notice he said this of Christ, Christ himself is our peace, for he reconciles us to God and gives us the grace to live in peace with God and our neighbor.
And St. Paul echoes that statement of Micah when he writes, he himself is our peace.
He who made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
That is, he has made one church from Christians of two different origins, Jewish and Gentile, expiating the sins of both by offering his flesh on the cross.
And this flesh he received from the Blessed Virgin.
St. Paul alludes to this in the second reading.
When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
God sent his Son to redeem the Jews, who were under the law of Moses, which condemned sin but did not provide means of avoiding it.
He also redeemed the others, who only had their reason by which to know God's law, and certainly did not have those aids of the grace that are the sacraments.
This redemption was possible because God sent his Son to be born of a woman, or literally made of a woman.
That is, to receive our flesh from a woman, and only from a woman without the cooperation of any man.
For he had to be born of a virgin.
He had to have only one parent in time, as he has only one parent in eternity.
St. Joseph is the father of Jesus in virtue of his charity and not by natural fatherhood.
Jesus is the natural Son of God and the adopted Son of a man, while we on the contrary are adopted sons of God and natural sons of men.
However, Jesus is the natural Son of a woman, and therefore Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of Christ, and the Mother of God in all truth.
Of course, she did not forget the divine nature, but she begot the Son of God in his human nature.
Thanks to her, the Son of God is a man, and we must become sons of God.
The proof that we are sons is the Holy Spirit dwelling in the soul of each one of us, who is in God's grace, of each one with whom God is pleased.
Those to whom God, Earth, and therefore we are those to whom peace is promised, peace among those with whom He is pleased.
But why do we not see this peace upon the Earth?
Because men who are not at peace with God provoke wars.
There is perfect peace among men where there is no sin, or at least where there is no grave sin.
This is why lasting peace is so hard to achieve in this world.
But the means are already at our disposal, given to us by Christ, the Prince of Peace, and Mary, the Queen of Peace.
Christ was born under the law to ransom us all.
Being born under the law of Moses meant that he had to receive circumcision, the sign of the covenant.
As prescribed for every male Jew, he was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, and today is the eighth day of Christmas.
Therefore, today's Mass also commemorates Jesus' circumcision.
This was his first opportunity to shed his blood for our salvation.
And that was quite important, because according to the letter of Hebrews, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
And Isaiah says, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
It was no accident that Christ shed his blood so soon.
He was anxious to save us.
He did not want to wait thirty years.
He began on the eighth day of his life.
Oh, what is sin, and what a great evil it must be, if even as a child Jesus was eager to shed his divine blood in reparation for it.
And to the child's blood were added the tears of the Mother of God, in a poor taste of Calvary.
They were united in suffering for our salvation.
And perhaps she wept not so much for her son's suffering as for the hardness of our hearts.
Theologians tell us that a single drop of Christ's blood would be enough to save the whole world.
So why didn't he stop with his circumcision?
There he shed at least one drop.
Why did he continue to shed his blood in the garden, in the scourging, with the crown of thorns, in the way of the cross, and even to his death on the cross?
Because this abundant passion moves us more effectively to abandon sin and receive the grace of forgiveness and peace.
Even though it meant much more suffering, he did it because he loves us so much and does not want us to be lost.
But even with all this, there are still hard hearts that do not know the things that make for peace.
What makes for peace is what God commands and counsels.
This is true for individuals, for families, for nations.
May the Immaculate Mother of God, therefore, who did not hesitate to welcome a motherhood that would make her suffer, grant us the wisdom and grace to choose God's commandments over sin.
For this is the way of peace.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.