Jan. 1 Mass Readings: Follow Mary, Mother of God and Mary of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

January 1 is the Octave Day of Christmas, eight days after the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord, a second Christmas Solemnity, Christmas Day II. But it isn’t called that. Instead it is the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.

That fact alone shows the singularity of Mary. The Octave of Easter Sunday is Easter Sunday II, a second day to celebrate what Jesus did, but Christmas Sunday II celebrates what Mary did. Of course, Jesus is still the star of the show — he is the one the shepherds run to see, and he receives a name bestowed by an angel. But the day is named for Mary because of her singular importance in the story of Jesus.

To try to understand this, and how this mystery applies to us, think of Mary Bailey in the film It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is the star of the show, but, significantly, as Clare Coffey and others have pointed out, the signature achievements of his life are made possible by another: Mary Bailey, his wife.

Here are five takeaways for this Holy Day of Obligation drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: The Old Testament describes a world in which Jesus wasn’t yet born, and the people hoped for that to change.

The First Reading gives Israel’s great “Priestly Benediction.” It comes as Moses prepares to establish the tabernacle, the place where God will dwell with his people. This quiet presence is the partial fulfillment of a giant hope. After rejecting life with God in the very beginnings of human history, the people are experiencing a world with a giant hole in it. They are like George Bailey wanting his life back, the one he had before he decided to throw it away.

It is into this longing that we hear, “The LORD said to Moses … ‘This is how you shall bless the Israelites.’” Then, there follow three invocations of “The LORD,” invocations that mystically address each of the three persons of the Trinity. Each invocation is a distant hope in the Old Testament, but you can see how all three apply in a brand new way to Mary, Mother of God, and secondarily, to us.

First is “The LORD bless you and keep you!”

The phrase “keep you” means “defend” or “guard” you — it is an assurance that God will protect us from harm.

This is what the Lord did for Mary and Joseph — not by keeping them away from danger, but by accompanying them through it. The Gospel for this day shows the intrepid Mary after she has given birth exposed to the elements being visited by the shepherds, ruffians and rejects of the ancient world. For God to “keep” her didn’t mean that God would keep Mary clear of uncomfortable circumstances and difficult company — it meant Mary’s sacrificial trust in God was repaid with blessings, even in the midst of circumstances that would otherwise be misery.

Mary opening her outdoor nursery to the shepherds is like Mary Bailey offering her wedding money to the mob making a run on the bank — or like our generosity when it hurts. We can trust that if we trust in him, confident that we are “kept” by the Lord, he will bless our sacrifice.

Second: Mary, the Mother of God, fulfills the second petition: “The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!”

Mary is the prime example of what it means for the Lord to “let his face shine upon you.”

St. Padre Pio put it this way: “You know well that at the birth of Our Lord the shepherds heard the angelic and divine chants of the heavenly spirits. The Scriptures say so. But they do not say that his Virgin Mother and St. Joseph, who were nearer to the Child, heard the voices of the angels or saw those miracles of splendor.”

What did Mary experience in place of a host of angels? The gaze of Jesus Christ, the son of God, in person.

“Now, I ask you,” said Padre Pio. “Would you not have preferred to have been in the dark stable, filled with the cries of the little Child, rather than to have been with the shepherds?”

Absolutely, we would. The shepherds seem to agree. In today’s Gospel, the light of Christ’s face transforms them into the first evangelists, “glorifying and praising for all they had heard and seen.” There is no better place to be than in the loving gaze of Jesus Christ, truly present in the manger, and in the sacrament in every tabernacle and on the altar at every Mass.

His face transforms us. In every depiction of the Nativity scene, you can sense how the baby Jesus transforms the faces of all who look on him: Joseph, every shepherd, and the animals too. In the center, though, is his mother who has made these humble circumstances into a showcase for him. To see how this applies to each of us notice how Mary Bailey’s love transforms the broken-down old Granville House into a home in It’s a Wonderful Life — and then see how love transforms our own circumstances into a showcase for Christ.

Third: Mary fulfills the third petition, that “The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!”

The final invocation of this blessing promises something we all long for: peace. The Gospel makes it clear that Jesus and Mary bring exactly that to the shepherds and, by extension, to us.

In announcing the birth of Christ, the angels told the shepherds “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Now, meeting Mary, the shepherds “made known the message that had been told them about this child,” says the Gospel.

Mary heard this message of heavenly peace and “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Mary Bailey does the same thing. She witnesses her husband having a breakdown at the end of a devastating day, but she has kept a vision of him in her heart, and she responds to his violence with peace and by literally calling her children, and then the town, to prayer. It is a sign for each of us to be an oasis of the peace of God in the world, quietly resting in his kindly look.

Fourth: Mary was just the first to see this blessing fulfilled: We are the latest.

We have each seen the fulfillment of the grand priestly blessing in our lives. St. Paul in the Second Reading describes how God blesses and keeps us, lets his face shine on us, and gives us his kindness and peace in Baptism.

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman,” he writes, “so that we might receive adoption as sons.” He adds: “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out ‘Abba, Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then also an heir, through God.”

Everyone who is baptized is an adopted son or daughter of God. That means that we have been given the very thing the prophets longed for in the Christless world of the Old Testament — and what George Bailey longed for in Pottersville.

We haven been given our life back, our full life, the life of a child of God. And make no mistake: We are truly adopted sons and daughters of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, calling out with Christ, “Abba Father!” — “Papa! Father!”

Fifth: Where does this leave us? We need to be Marys.

Catholic celebrate the great feast of Mary, the Mother of God, and see her as the singular, unique, unrepeatable, irreproachable saint who brought Jesus Christ, God himself, into the world.

But there’s more than one Mary. The Church has been a second Mary to us, and that means we have been Mary to others.

Jesus himself said it would be like this. When he was traveling with his disciples and was told that his mother has arrived, Mark reports: “Looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”  Everyone who has helped bring a child to be baptized has brought an adopted son or daughter into the family of God, acting as Mary did at Bethlehem. We are each Mary: a secondary character who makes the hero’s victory possible.

We are like Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Bedford Falls. The fiat of Mary, and the home she made for him, made all the events of Christ’s life possible. And Mary Bailey’s love and sacrifice made all the good works of George Bailey possible. We, too, are secondary characters who make a hero’s victory possible, preparing the world for the coming of the kingdom of Christ.

Among the first words in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life are a prayer to “Joseph, Jesus and Mary” and among the last words in the movie are “with angelic hosts proclaim: Christ is born in Bethlehem.” Like Mary of Nazareth, we can stare in wonder at the Christ Child at Mass and ponder in our heart what it means for us to be in his extraordinary family. And, like Mary of Bedford Falls, we can offer God our circumstances, whatever they are, to make them a showcase for the love that was born on Christmas Day.

Image: Alamy

By Tom Hoopes