Media vita in morte sumus - in the midst of life we are surrounded by death. Quem quaerimus adiutorem, nisi te, Domine? - What other helper can we look for, apart from you, O Lord? These words are sung in a responsory, number 42 in our book “Cantus selecti”. They are set in the fourth mode: plaintive, pleading, achingly beautiful; filled at once with an intense awareness of God’s transcendent majesty, and also of humanity’s pitiable fragility. The piece seems to have been composed around the year 1200, though based in part on another, around 300 years older. Originally designed for the lenten liturgy, it became very popular throughout Europe as a prayer in time of calamity or distress. The very singing of this Chant was considered to have efficacious intercessory power. We can imagine with what fervour it would have been sung at the time of the Black Death, when in the mid fourteenth century bubonic plague wiped out between a third and a half of Europe’s population.
Now once again people feel everywhere the presence and pressure of death, held daily before our eyes by the screaming media. Our country is gripped by paralysis, as we wait for science and technology to deliver us from our enemy. But while the secular state takes today an uneasy and fearful New Year’s holiday, the Catholic Church sings, because she has a joy that no affliction can suppress. Quietly, maybe too quietly, she continues to proclaim her message, her faith, her good news. She has something new to say: something radically better than even the most optimistic Government Announcement. Today with the whole Church we celebrate the Octave day of Christmas, and the Feast of Mary Mother of God. It’s as if suddenly, amid all the darkness, a light is seen shining. Amidst all the encompassing death, we’re confronted, as it were unexpectedly, by new life, new hope, new joy.
A baby lies in a manger. He is God’s radical response to humanity’s distress. In him God has indeed come to our aid. The Collect of today’s liturgy describes him as “auctor vitae” - the author of life. He himself is life and light. He existed from all eternity; he is God made man, and he has come to our rescue. He found us in wretched condition, so he set about transforming that; changing what we were; re-making us as something entirely better. In him we are destined no longer merely for death, but set instead on course for everlasting life and glory.
Who is this child? His circumcision on the eighth day marks him as an Israelite, subject to the law; subject also to our mortal condition, with all its implications. But at the same ceremony he is named, in obedience to the Angel. This marks him out as our Saviour; as one sent to us from heaven; as one with a divine mission; as our Lord. You might have thought all that should be enough for us. But no. So deep was our darkness, and so powerful the grip death had on us, that the mission of Jesus led him to submit himself even to death, and then to conquer it, to overturn it, in a definitive and irreversible victory of life.
The Collect of today’s Mass rightly states that it is through the fruitful virginity of Blessed Mary that God has chosen to give us the rewards of eternal salvation. The prayer then goes on to make a remarkable request. “Sentiamus” - may we feel, may we experience, may we know first hand the intercession of Mary for us. It’s as if here the words of St. Paul in today’s second reading are taken up and extended. We know we are sons of God, says Paul, because of the Spirit of sonship within us. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ Son of God cries out within us: Abba! Father! (Gal 4:6). Today especially we want boldly to add: since Jesus is also the Son of Mary, that same Spirit must also make us cry out Mary! Mother!
Our Evangelical friends are wont to accost us and ask (very earnestly) if we have a real relationship with Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour. Today especially we want to assert that for such a relationship to exist at all, we have to be re-born, new born, with Jesus. Necessarily that puts us in relationship with Mary as our Mother. Now the Church prays that all may know, feel, experience the love Mary has for them as their mother; that all may joyfully and confidently take her as their personal protector and advocate and guide.
This prayer - “sentiamus” - “may we feel this” - seems more than ever appropriate in a time of general anxiety, of sickness and loneliness, of vulnerability and loss. Soldiers who are wounded or gravely threatened in battle often instinctively cry out for their mother. Surely Christians in trouble should do no less. But unlike the soldiers in battle, we have the assurance of being heard. There are stories beyond counting of people who have turned to Mary in time of crisis, and felt certain that she heard their prayer and acted to save them.
Now at the beginning of a New Year we have so much to entrust to her. We do so today very deliberately and consciously. Most importantly of all: that each of us lives this coming year ever more in the Spirit of Christ’s sonship. With Mary his Mother, may we truly conceive Jesus within our own hearts, and bring him forth, and nourish his life within us, for God’s glory, and our own salvation. We ask our Lady to help us love Jesus more this coming year, and believe in his name more, and hope in him more: always approaching ever closer to the measure of her own faith and hope and love.
We ask our Lady to intercede in a special way for the Church at this time, when Government decrees close down her public worship, and hamper the administration of her sacraments, and cut many of her faithful off from ordinary Christian fellowship and support. We ask her to guide our Church leaders, and all the faithful, so that they find ways of bringing the Gospel to our secularised culture; so that they effectively lead people who know nothing of God or of Jesus into the way of salvation; so that they succeed in countering the inhuman and dehumanising forces at work in our society.
Then of course we entrust to Mary all our concerns about the current crisis. May this year see its effective end, as we pray. May those who suffer because of it be consoled. And may all who have died come at last to eternal life, with us all, in Christ Jesus our Lord.