Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God 2023

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles
January 1, 2023

My brothers and sisters in Christ:¹

As we all know, yesterday — the final day of last year — our Pope Emeritus, Pope Benedict XVI went home to God.

He was a beautiful man, a humble man, and one of the great figures in the Church in our times, and in the history of the Church.

We will miss him. So let’s join Pope Francis in giving thanks to God for his extraordinary life and witness to the love of Jesus Christ.

For me, especially, it’s beautiful that he has gone to heaven because he is the one who appointed me Archbishop of Los Angeles. So now I can count on his intercession from heaven for my ministry here in the archdiocese.

May Our Lady, the Holy Mother of God, wrap him in the mantle of her love, and lead him into paradise and the love that never ends. May he rest in peace.

So as we begin this new year, I pray that this will be a year of peace and joy for all of you and your families, and for our communities, and our world.

And this is not only my prayer. This is also the prayer of the Church.

It is a beautiful to reflect on the fact that the first Scripture reading that we hear every new year is a blessing from Almighty God, himself.

We heard his blessing in our first reading this morning from the Book of Numbers: “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!”

This is the blessing that God instructed Moses to impart over the Israelites, and it is a blessing now for all of us.

And this is the dream of every human heart, it’s the secret dream that you have in your heart and I have in mine. We all want to live in the light of the Lord’s presence, we all want to know his kindness and his peace.

So this is what every heart desires, and so the Church declares the first day of every new year to be the “World Day of Peace.”

In his reflection for this year, Pope Francis says: “Our greatest and yet most fragile treasure is our shared humanity as brothers and sisters, children of God.”

And the Pope calls us to remember: that we cannot save ourselves, and we cannot be saved alone. We need God, and we need one another.

So, we pray today with the Holy Father Pope Francis to open our hearts more and more to the needs of our brothers and sisters, and to realize our common humanity.

The deepest human truth is that we are one family — that we are all sisters and brothers, created by God to love and to be loved.

And St. Paul tells us that in the second reading. As we heard: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Jesus, as we know, is the Son of Mary and the Son of God! That is why we venerate Mary our Blessed Mother today, under the ancient title of the Most Holy Mother of God.

In this Child, born of Mary, we have a new beginning, a new identity for our lives. She is the Mother of God, and because of that — she is our Mother.

In our Gospel passage, we continue reflecting on the Nativity of Jesus, and in the still of the night, the shepherds run to find “Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in the manger.”

It’s a beautiful moment, so quiet and peaceful. We can imagine the shepherds on their knees before the manger, in all humility and wonder, adoring the Child. We can imagine Mary holding her baby’s face close to her cheek with tenderness.

My brothers and sisters, this is where God wants us to be. Close to Jesus. Close to Mary. Close to Joseph.

In this Child born of Mary, we can behold the face of God! Through his eyes, the Lord looks upon us with kindness.

And God wants us to grow in his love. It’s interesting that our Gospel today gives us two practical examples for how we can live in that glorious freedom of being children of God.

The first example is Our Blessed Mother. We heard in today’s Gospel: “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”

Mary was thinking about Jesus all the time. And that’s how we ought to live, reflecting on Our Lord’s words and deeds in the Gospels, pondering the mysteries of his life, seeking to know his will for us. Trying always to follow his path for our lives, which is a path of love and compassion.

So that’s a beautiful — obviously as we know, it’s a beautiful example.

The second example for us today is the shepherds. They had such eagerness to meet Jesus and to adore him.

We should have that same excitement to see Jesus and spend time with him. And yes, we can.

We can always find Jesus in the Eucharist, just as truly as the shepherds found him in the manger in Bethlehem. We can open our hearts to Jesus, tell him everything that we are thinking and feeling, we can ask him for light and guidance in our lives, in our personal needs.

The shepherds come to adore the Child. But then they returned back to their ordinary lives. As we heard: “Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”

My brothers and sisters, this is also how we are meant to live, as children of God. By glorifying God with our lives, loving others as Jesus loved, and trying to bring the gift of his peace and mercy to every person we meet. Beautiful example, the example of the shepherds.

Let us always keep in mind that beautiful example of Mary our Blessed Mother and the shepherds.

This is how our Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI taught us to live. Today, let us remember his beautiful words. He said: “The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. … There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.”

Let’s honor his life and ministry by dedicating ourselves again, to revealing God to others by the way we live, speaking and bearing witness to our friendship with him.

So my brothers and sisters, as this new year begins, let us turn to Mary our Holy Mother. Turn to her in filial devotion because she’s our mother too. Let’s ask her to be a mother to us, and to help us to live as children of God, and to spread his peace in our world.