January 1: Mary Most Holy, Mother of God
Icon of the Church
The solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, placed at the heart of the Octave of Christmas and at the beginning of the year, introduces the contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation from the perspective of the one in whom the Word assumed flesh.
The title Theotókos does not primarily express a Marian privilege, but a decisive Christological truth: the one born of Mary is truly God. Divine motherhood thus becomes the theological criterion that guarantees the personal unity of Christ and the authenticity of his humanity. To affirm that Mary is Mother of God means to confess that in Jesus Christ there subsists a single person, that of the eternal Word, in whom the divine nature and the human nature are united without confusion and without separation. Motherhood pertains to the person, not to the nature: Mary does not generate divinity as such, but generates according to the flesh the one who is God. This principle, clarified by patristic reflection and dogmatically defined by the Council of Ephesus, constitutes a bulwark against any Christological reduction that fragments the subject of the Incarnation.
The figure of Mary, however, is not exhausted by her historical relationship with the Son. Ecclesial tradition has recognized in the Mother of God the icon of the Church herself. Just as Mary conceives by the power of the Holy Spirit and gives to the world the Head of the Body, so the Church, animated by the same Spirit, gives birth to the members of Christ through preaching and the Sacraments. In both there is at work a fruitfulness that does not arise from the flesh or from human will, but from the gratuitous initiative of God, who associates the creature with his own salvific work.
This parallel also extends to the personal dimension of faith. Mary becomes the model of the believing soul, in which the Word continually desires to be incarnated. The event of the Incarnation does not belong solely to the past, but asks to be interiorized: Christ takes form in the life of the believer to the extent that human freedom opens itself to the action of grace. Mary’s “fiat” thus assumes a paradigmatic value, revealing that the obedience of faith is the place where God makes salvation operational.
The liturgical placement of this solemnity, on the eighth day after the birth of Jesus, further underscores the interweaving of Incarnation and Redemption. The Child who receives his name and enters the history of the people of the Covenant is already the Savior who takes upon himself the human condition even to its most radical consequences. In this horizon, Mary appears inseparable from the Son: the mystery of the one cannot be understood without the other.
Ultimately, the proclamation of Mary as Mother of God is not a marginal assertion, but a theological synthesis that safeguards together the truth about Christ, the Church and humanity. In it the central paradox of Christianity is revealed: the Creator willed to have a mother, and through the free response of a creature made possible the divinization of humanity.