Once again we have a special “confluence” of liturgical celebrations, with the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (aka, New Year’s Day) followed immediately by Epiphany (aka, Three Kings Day). There is some additional association with them in my mind, beyond their location in the calendar this year.
One of my favorite pictures is that of the very, very little Nora, my oldest niece. Her Dad took the picture, and with beautiful smile and bright eyes she looks up at her Dad and Mom with an expression of total trust. I wonder if Jesus looked at Mary like that; I’m pretty sure she looked at Jesus like that—with an expression of amazement and wonder and joy (and, perhaps also, of premonition).
When strangers “from the east” appeared, did Mary at first kick in to “Momma Bear mode”? Joseph, seemingly, was not there at the time. If Jesus is fully divine and fully human, I have no doubt that Mary was also fully Mother! And I wonder if the word epiphany didn’t also apply to Mary at this moment: Is this the meaning of my Child? Remember: Matthew’s Gospel has no Annunciation. And even if it did, all Mary could come to believe was the fact of her Son as Redeemer; she couldn’t know the how. So: “Mary, did you know?” Yes, and no…
We know the symbolic meanings put on to the gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold—we know the carol “We Three Kings” well enough. What gifts would we bring? Perhaps we would bring straw for the manger, symbolic of good deeds done for love of Him? Perhaps we brought “gifts for Baby Jesus” as He is present today in the lives of children of unwed or abandoned mothers, as are housed at Mary’s Shelter or helped by COPE or 2B. Perhaps, as the carol “In The Bleak Mid-Winter” suggests, we might give Him our heart. But there is one other gift that He came to receive…
In the movie Epiphania, made for religious education classes, there is another person who comes to the Child—an old, shriveled, shrouded woman: Eve. She falls down at the Child’s feet weeping, and then with the same kind of hopeful look in her eyes that I saw in the picture of my niece, she offers something to Him: a pomegranate as shriveled as she is: the forbidden fruit. It’s an allusion to the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone, who was condemned to six months in the underworld because of having eaten seven pomegranate seeds. The Child takes the fruit, and the woman backs away, forgiven. And the film ends with the heartbreakingly beautiful music of Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria—the “Et In Terra Pax” movement (but with music that reminds us of the price for that peace).
The Mother of God is also the Mother of Sorrows; her Son is the “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”—for us. There is no greater revelation, and it leads us to make better resolutions than just losing 10 pounds or exercising more. We can resolve to “give Him (and her) our heart.”