Pope Benedict and Letting the Face of God Shine On Us Like Mary, Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, January 1, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
January 1, 2023
Num 6:22-27, Ps 67, Gal 4:4-7, Lk 2:16-21

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• As we continue to mourn for Pope Benedict and pray as he asked in his spiritual testament that “the Lord may admit [him] to the eternal dwellings, despite all [his] sins and shortcomings,” it’s fitting for us to profit anew from the extraordinary insights the Holy Spirit gave him to understand and teach the Word of God. Yesterday, I re-read the eight homilies he gave for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God from 2006 through 2013 and, in homage to him and great gratitude to God, I’d like to mine his deep insights on today’s readings and feast.
• He said in 2006, “In today’s liturgy our gaze continues to be turned to the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, while with particular emphasis we contemplate the Motherhood of the Virgin Mary.In the Pauline passage we have heard (cf. Gal 4: 4), the Apostle very discreetly points to the One through whom the Son of God enters the world:  Mary of Nazareth, Mother of God,  At the beginning of a new year, we are invited, as it were, to attend her school, the school of the faithful disciple of the Lord, in order to learn from her to accept in faith and prayer the salvation God desires to pour out upon those who trust in his merciful love.”
• In 2008, he described the essence of that school as a school of contemplative prayer. He said, “The Evangelist Luke repeats several times that Our Lady meditated silently on these extraordinary events in which God had involved her. We also heard this in the short Gospel passage that the Liturgy presents to us today. “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2: 19).The Greek verb used, sumbállousa, literally means ‘piecing together’ and makes us think of a great mystery to be discovered little by little. Although the Child lying in a manger looks like all children in the world, at the same time he is totally different: he is the Son of God, he is God, true God and true man. This mystery — the Incarnation of the Word and the divine Motherhood of Mary — is great and certainly far from easy to understand with the human mind alone. Yet, by learning from Mary, we can understand with our hearts what our eyes and minds do not manage to perceive or contain on their own. Indeed, this is such a great gift that only through faith are we granted to accept it, while not entirely understanding it. And it is precisely on this journey of faith that Mary comes to meet us as our support and guide. … In her heart Mary continued to treasure, to ‘piece together’ the subsequent events of which she was to be a witness and protagonist, even to the death on the Cross and the Resurrection of her Son Jesus. It is only by pondering in the heart, in other words, by piecing together and finding unity in all we experience, that, following Mary, we can penetrate the mystery of a God who was made man out of love and who calls us to follow him on the path of love. … May the new year … be a time in which to advance in that knowledge of the heart, which is the wisdom of saints.”
• That contemplation, Pope Benedict would say in 2010, happens not just with the mind and the heart but also with the eyes. He commented, “We heard in both the First Reading from the Book of Numbers and in the Responsorial Psalm, several expressions with reference to God that contain the metaphor of the face: ‘The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you’ (Nm 6: 25). ‘May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations’ (Ps 67[66]: 1-3). The face is the expression of the person par excellence. It is what makes him or her recognizable and from it transpire sentiments, thoughts and heartfelt intentions. God by his nature is invisible, yet the Bible applies this image to him too. Showing his face is an expression of his benevolence, whereas hiding it indicates his anger and indignation. The Book of Exodus says that ‘The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ (Ex 33: 11), and again it was to Moses that the Lord promised his closeness with a very unusual formula: ‘my presence [face] will go with you, and I will give you rest’ (Ex 33: 14). The Psalms show believers to us as those who seek God’s Face (cf. Ps 27[26]: 8); 105[104]: 4), and who, in worship, long to see him (Ps 42[41]: 3) and tell us that ‘the upright’ shall ‘behold his face’ (Ps 11[10]: 7).One may interpret the whole biblical narrative as the gradual revelation of the Face of God, until it reaches his full manifestation in Jesus Christ. ‘When the time had fully come,’ the Apostle Paul has reminded us today too, ‘God sent forth his Son,’ (Gal 4: 4), immediately adding, ‘born of woman, born under the law.’ God’s Face took on a human face, letting itself be seen and recognized in the Son of the Virgin Mary, who for this reason we venerate with the loftiest title of ‘Mother of God.’ She, who had preserved in her heart the secret of the divine motherhood, was the first to see the face of God made man in the small fruit of her womb. The Mother had a very special, unique and, in a certain way, exclusive relationship with the newborn Son. The first face a child sees is that of his mother and this gaze is crucial for his relationship with life, with himself, with others and with God. … Among the many typologies of icons of the Virgin Mary in the Byzantine tradition is the one called ‘of tenderness’ that portrays the Child Jesus with his face resting, cheek to cheek, against his Mother’s. The Child gazes at the Mother and she is looking at us, almost as if to mirror for those who are observing and praying for the tenderness of God who came down to her from Heaven and was incarnate in the Son of man, whom she holds in her arms. We can contemplate in this Marian image something of God himself: a sign of the ineffable love that impelled him ‘to give his Only Son’ (cf. Jn 3: 16). But that same icon also shows us, in Mary, the face of the Church which reflects Christ’s light upon us and upon the whole world.”
• He built on these insights in 2013, his last celebration of the Solemnity as pope, saying, “For sacred Scripture, contemplating the face of God is the greatest happiness: ‘You gladden him with the joy of your face’ (Ps21:7). … But what does it mean concretely to contemplate the face of the Lord, as understood in the New Testament? It means knowing him directly, in so far as is possible in this life, through Jesus Christ in whom he is revealed. To rejoice in the splendor of God’s face means penetrating the mystery of his Name made known to us in Jesus, understanding something of his interior life and of his will, so that we can live according to his plan of love for humanity. … Jesus declares, ‘I have manifested your name to men’ (Jn 17:6). God’s Son made man has let us know the Father, he has let us know the hidden face of the Father through his visible human face; by the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, he has led us to understand that, in him, we too are children of God, as Saint Paul says in the passage we have just heard [in the second reading]: ‘The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’’” (Gal 4:6).
• We can finish on the connection between the face and the name of God, which is what Pope Benedict pondered almost every year reflecting with wonder on the blessing given in the first reading. “The Lord bless you and keep you! The Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you! The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!” Pope Benedict commented in 2006, “This is the blessing that priests used to invoke upon the people at the end of the great liturgical feasts, particularly the feast of the New Year. We are in the presence of a text packed with meaning, punctuated by the Name of the Lord, which is repeated at the beginning of every verse. This text is not limited to the mere enunciation of principles but strives to realize what it says. Indeed, as is widely known, in Semitic thought the blessing of the Lord produces well-being and salvation through its own power. … The effectiveness of blessing is later more specifically brought about by God, who protects us (v. 24), favors us and gives us peace, which is to say in other words, he offers us an abundance of happiness. By having us listen once again to this ancient blessing at the beginning of a new solar year, the liturgy, as it were, encourages us in turn to invoke the Lord’s blessing upon the New Year that is just beginning, so that it may be a year of prosperity and peace for us all.”
• And in 2009 he discussed how that prayer for blessing was brought to completion in, he said, the “Word who, starting with the event in Bethlehem, recalled in its historical actuality by the Gospel of Luke (2:16-21) and reinterpreted in all its saving importance by the Apostle Paul (Gal 4: 4-7), becomes a Blessing for the People of God and for all humanity.Thus the ancient Jewish tradition of blessing is brought to completion (Nm 6: 22-27): the priests of Israel blessed the people by putting the Lord’s Name upon them: ‘so shall they put my name upon the people of Israel.’” That is the name given by Mary and Joseph at Jesus’ circumcision, recalling that in Jesus God indeed saves. The name of Jesus, the person of Jesus, the face of Jesus, is the means by which God the Father blesses us with every blessing in the heavens, keeps and protects us, shines his face upon us, fills us with grace and favor, looks upon us with tender love and grants us peace.
• We pray that our beloved Pope Benedict, after the completion of his earthly life, has a chance to look upon that saving face of Jesus forever and experience in full measure the salvation and eternal peace Christ in the fullness of time was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary to bring us.

The readings for this Sunday were: