On the morning of this January 1, 2024, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican within the framework of the Solemnity of Saint Mary Mother God, and invited the faithful to entrust the new year to him.
The Holy Father, who presided over the Holy Mass from one of the sides of the Vatican basilica, highlighted in his homily that “God becomes man and he does so in the sign of a woman, Mary.”
For Pope Francis, “it is the path chosen by God” and also “the point of arrival of so many people and generations who, ‘drop by drop’, have prepared the coming of the Lord to the world.”
Likewise, he stated that “the Mother with the Child marks a new creation, a new beginning,” while describing as “beautiful” the fact of beginning the new year by invoking Mary.
Along these lines, he explained that the words “Mother of God” express “the joyful certainty that the Lord, a tender Child in the arms of his mother, has been united forever to our humanity, to the point that this is no longer just ours, but also his.”
With this prayer you can put your intentions for 2024 in the hands of the Virgin Mary.
According to the Holy Father, these words also show “the eternal alliance of the Lord with us” and in addition to being a dogma of faith, it is also a “dogma of hope; God in man and man in God, forever.”
For this reason, Pope Francis remarked that “Mary’s motherhood is the way to find the paternal tenderness of God, the closest, most direct, easiest way.”
“The Mother, in fact, leads us to the beginning and heart of faith, which is not a theory or a commitment, but rather an immense gift, which makes us beloved children, homes of the Father’s love,” he noted next.
Before the thousands of faithful who listened to him from the basilica, the Holy Father affirmed that the Church “needs Mary to rediscover her own feminine face, to become more like her who, as a woman, Virgin and Mother, represents her model and figure. perfect.”
In addition, he pointed out that it must also be done “to give space to women and to be generative through a pastoral care made of care and concern, of patience and maternal courage.”
“The world also needs to look to mothers and women to find peace, to escape the spirals of violence and hatred, and once again have human eyes and hearts that see. And every society needs to embrace the gift of women, of each woman: respect her, care for her, value her, knowing that whoever hurts a woman profanes God, born of a woman.”
Later, Pope Francis recalled that “no one better than the Mother knows the times and urgencies of her children” and that is why Mary also “hastens for us the overflow of grace and leads our lives towards plenitude.”
The Holy Father invited the faithful to turn to the Virgin Mary “when we are tempted to withdraw into ourselves; When we fail to untangle ourselves from the knots of life, we seek refuge in it,” he urged.
“Our time, void of peace,” the Pontiff continued, “needs a Mother who reunites the human family. Let us look to Mary to be builders of unity, and let us do it with the creativity of her Mother, who takes care of her children, brings them together and consoles them, listens to her sorrows and wipes away her tears.”
“Let us entrust the new year to the Mother of God. Let us consecrate our lives. She, with tenderness, will know how to reveal her fullness; because she will lead us to Jesus, and Jesus is the fullness of time, of all time, of our time, in the time of each one of us,” assured Pope Francis.
Finally, the Holy Father asked “that this year be filled with the consolation of the Lord” and the “maternal tenderness of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.”