As we celebrate Christmas day for an octave (eight days) we continue to keep the mystery of the Incarnation before us — the mystery of the Eternal Word made flesh, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior. We come to the manger to gaze upon the little child that is born of Mary and to contemplate in wonder what God has accomplished among us. We find ourselves wondering along with the shepherds and people of that time in history, “What will this child be?” and considering all of the marvelous events that surround his birth. The angels proclaimed him in glory as Savior and Lord. The shepherds recognized in him the Good Shepherd who would shepherd his people in love and lay down his life for his sheep. The wise men came and knelt down before him, offering him royal gifts and heralding his birth as the universal King. Over thousands of years we have seen his presence manifested in the lives of saints and great witnesses to the faith. Each of us, in a very personal way, have encountered him in our own lives and seen him manifested in the many experiences of faith on our journey of discipleship with him. We have come to know and understand in faith that Jesus is God and has revealed to us the face of God in his human face and has shown us God’s mercy.

Over this week of the octave of Christmas we celebrate witnesses to his divine presence and have contemplated deeply what his presence means to us today. St. Stephen the proto-martyr reminds us that we must lay down our lives for Christ, St. John the Evangelist proclaims that eternal life was made visible in Jesus, the Eternal Word Incarnate and that we must also “see and believe”, the Holy Innocents point us to the threat and fear and hatred that the world of Herods harbors toward believers born anew into the world of the Spirit. We celebrate the feast of the Holy Family and we see God enter into a share of our human life through the Holy Family of Nazareth and therefore sanctify all of family life. It reminds us that our love of God, manifest in the child Jesus, must be real and every day, first received in the love of family life, in the domestic church of the family home, nurtured each day in prayer, sheltered, protected and grown to full maturity. It helps us to recognize the sacred nature of marriage and family life to foster faith and growth in the Spirit of Jesus and lead us to our true vocation in service to the Father in love.

On the eighth day of the Octave of Christmas we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We have seen the mystery of the Son of God manifested in our human history and have come to believe in faith that he is God, Christ and Lord. We have seen in time that Mary is the Theotokus, the God-bearer, the Mother of God. She is the one who points us to her Son as God’s true gift to the world for our salvation. Through Mary we come to a full understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation as the Eternal Word is made Incarnate in her womb through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. He has received our human nature from her immaculate and virginal flesh and has sanctified our human existence by sharing in our human nature and history. In entering into our world and history through Mary, the Mother of God, he has redeemed all of our human life.

The council fathers at Ephesus affirmed this great mystery of faith in proclaiming Mary as the Theotokus, the Mother of God, in 431, against the heresies of Nestorius, who had proclaimed that a baby of two or three months could not be considered to be God. From that time the Church has honored Mary as the Mother of God, who bore for us a savior who is Lord and God. At Bethlehem, through the birth of Jesus, Mary is seen to be the Mother of God. At Calvary, through the death of Jesus, Mary is given to be the Mother of the Church. Always she is a disciple of the Lord and united in her will with the will of God. We should also become God-bearers in our lives and allow the divine presence to grow within our own interior being. We must also carry him out into the world and be his humble servants and allow his word to accomplish its purpose in our lives.