On 1 January, Pope Francis presided over the Mass for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God in St. Peter’s Basilica, in which he invited us to entrust the new year 2025 to the Virgin Mary and called for the protection of human life from the mother’s womb.
Below is the homily given by Pope Francis
At the beginning of a new year that the Lord has granted us, it is beautiful to be able to raise the gaze of our heart to Mary. She, being Mother, reminds us of the relationship with her Son; she refers us to Jesus, she speaks to us of Jesus, she directs us towards Jesus. In this way, the Solemnity of Saint Mary, Mother of God, introduces us anew into the mystery of Christmas. God became one of us in the womb of Mary and we, who open the Holy Door to begin the Jubilee, are reminded today that “Mary is the door through which Christ entered the world” (St. Ambrose, Epistle 42, 4: PL VII).
The Apostle Paul sums up this mystery by saying that “God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). These words – “born of a woman” – resonate in our hearts today and remind us that Jesus, our Savior, became flesh and is revealed in the fragility of the flesh.
Born of a woman. This expression refers us first of all to Christmas: the Word became flesh. The apostle Paul specifies that he was born of a woman, as if he felt the need to remind us that God truly became man through a human womb. There is a temptation that attracts many people today and that can also seduce many Christians: to imagine or create for ourselves an “abstract” God, linked to a vague religious idea, to some pleasant passing emotion. Instead, he is real, he is human: he was born of a woman, he has a face and a name, and he calls us to relate to him. Christ Jesus, our Savior, was born of a woman; he has flesh and blood; he comes from the womb of the Father, but he is incarnated in the womb of the Virgin Mary; he comes from heaven above, but he lives in the depths of the earth; he is the Son of God, but he became the Son of Man. He, the image of almighty God, came in weakness; and even though he did not know sin, “God made him sinful for us” (2 Cor 5:21). He was born of a woman and is one of us; that is precisely why He can save us.
Born of a woman. This expression also speaks to us of Christ’s humanity, to tell us that He reveals Himself in the fragility of the flesh. He was incarnated in the womb of a woman, born like all creatures, and in this way He reveals Himself in the fragility of a Child. That is why the shepherds, when they went to see with their own eyes what the Angel had announced to them, did not find extraordinary signs or grandiose manifestations, but rather “they found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger” (Lk 2:16). They found a helpless, fragile child, in need of his mother’s care, in need of swaddling clothes and food, of caresses and love. St. Louis Grignion de Montfort said that divine Wisdom “did not wish, even if it could have done so, to give itself directly to men, but preferred to communicate itself to them through the Blessed Virgin, nor did it wish to come into the world at the age of a perfect man, independent of others, but as a small and weak child, in need of the care and assistance of a Mother” (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 139). And in the whole life of Jesus we can see this choice of God, the choice of smallness and concealment; he will never yield to the splendor of divine power in order to perform great signs and impose himself on others as the devil had suggested to him, but he will reveal the love of God in the beauty of his humanity, dwelling among us, sharing the ordinary life made up of toil and dreams, showing compassion for the sufferings of body and spirit, opening the eyes of the blind and reviving those who are lost in heart. Compassion. The three attitudes of God are mercy, closeness and compassion. God makes himself close, merciful and compassionate. Let us not forget this. Jesus shows us God through his fragile humanity, who takes care of the fragile.
Brothers and sisters, it is beautiful to think that Mary, the young woman from Nazareth, always leads us to the mystery of her Son, Jesus. She reminds us that Jesus comes in the flesh and that the privileged place where we can find him is above all in our lives, in our fragile humanity, in that of those who pass by us every day. Invoking her as Mother of God, we affirm that Christ was generated by the Father, but was truly born from the womb of a woman. We affirm that he is the Lord of time, but he inhabits this time of ours, also this new year, with his loving presence. We affirm that he is the Savior of the world, but we can find him and we must seek him in the face of every human being. And if he, who is the Son of God, made himself small to be embraced by a mother, to be cared for and fed, then it means that today he continues to come in all those who need the same care; in every sister and brother we meet and who requires attention, listening and tenderness.
Let us then entrust this new year to Mary, Mother of God, so that we too may learn, like her, to find the greatness of God in the smallness of life; so that we may learn to care for every creature born of a woman, above all by protecting the precious gift of life, as Mary did: life in the womb, the life of children, the life of those who suffer, the life of the poor, the life of the elderly, the life of those who are alone, the life of the dying. And today, on the World Day of Peace, we are all called to accept this invitation that springs from the maternal heart of Mary: to protect life, to take care of wounded life – there is so much wounded life – to dignify the life of every “woman-born” person; this is the fundamental basis for building a civilization of peace. For this reason, “I ask for a firm commitment to promote respect for the dignity of human life, from conception to natural death, so that every person can love his or her own life and look to the future with hope” (Message for the 53rd World Day of Peace, 1 January 2025).
Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, awaits us right there, in the Nativity scene. She also shows us, as she did the shepherds, the God who always surprises us, who does not come in the splendor of heaven, but in the smallness of a manger. Let us entrust this new Jubilee year to her, let us give her our questions, our worries, our sufferings, our joys and everything that we carry in our hearts. She is a mother! Let us entrust the whole world to her, so that hope may be reborn, so that peace may finally flourish among all the peoples of the earth.
History tells us that in Ephesus, when the bishops entered the church, the faithful people, with staffs in their hands, acclaimed: “Mother of God!” Surely the staffs were the promise of what would happen to them if they had not declared the dogma of the “Mother of God.” Today we do not have staffs, but we have the hearts and voices of children. That is why, all together, we acclaim the Holy Mother of God. All together: “Holy Mother of God!” three times. Together: “Holy Mother of God! Holy Mother of God! Holy Mother of God!”