The new year begins with the priestly blessing of the book of Numbers: "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to Aaron and his sons and say to them, "Thus shall you bless the children of Israel, saying to them, 'The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and grant you His favor, the Lord reach His face toward you and grant you peace.' Thus shall they call upon my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.".
Thus the Church asks and communicates God's blessing for all her children, and for all the days of the year that is beginning. And she makes us glimpse that, with the birth of his Son, the Lord has made his face shine among us and has made himself present in our history as the Prince of Peace. From him can come the true peace that we implore today for all the peoples of the earth, through the intercession of the Queen of Peace, his Mother.
We, as shepherds of Bethlehem, approach the Mother of God and contemplate her with her husband Joseph. From them we learn to lay Jesus in the manger, which in time will become a cradle, and then a bed: among the objects of daily family life and of our work. Jesus in the places of the house, among the games of childhood, the tools of work.
The times of family and social life are inhabited and lived by the face of God made visible in the human face of the Son of God, son of Mary. Let us look at Mary, Joseph and the child and learn from them to listen to the words of God from the mouths of unknown shepherds sent by angels to watch this prodigy: God-filled normality.
We are amazed by God's visits with his messengers and by the greatness of the poor who welcome and manifest it. We keep this amazement in the chest of our heart, to draw it out and nourish it during the days of the whole year, of our whole life, like Mary.
We look at Joseph with Mary. When the eight days prescribed for circumcision were completed, he was given the name Jesus, as the angel had called him before he was conceived in the womb. "He was named Jesus."The evangelist uses the third person passive. The angel had said to Mary: you shall call him Jesus; and so also to Joseph: you shall call him Jesus.
The formula in the third person reveals the mutual trust of the spouses, their profound unity. It was not Mary alone who gave him the name, nor Joseph alone; they did it together. There was a concurrence of both, as had already happened with Elizabeth and Zechariah when they gave the name to John.
Thus Joseph becomes the legal father of Jesus, and Mary manifests that she is the mother of Jesus in a unique way compared to all women in the history of men.
Homily on the readings of St. Mary, Mother of God
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
