Eight days after the celebration of the birth of the Son of God, we celebrate a feast in honor of the one who made that birth possible—Mary, the Mother of God.  For several of the Church’s first centuries of existence, that title was a source of controversy.  Some said that because God is immortal and eternal, Mary could not be called His Mother.  But this denies a central mystery of our faith—that God was conceived in the womb of Mary who gave birth to Him.  Since Jesus is truly God and truly human, Mary can truly be called His Mother, the Mother of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Mother of God.

The entrance antiphon at Mass recalls this mystery: “Hail, Holy Mother, who gave birth to the King who rules heaven and earth for ever.”  Mary was able to give birth to the Son of God because of the Holy Spirit who overshadowed her at the Annunciation.  As she said “yes” to God’s plan at that moment, so we begin a new calendar year with our focus on Mary and we ask that like her we too may say “yes” to God every day of this new year.

Today is also the World Day of Peace.  The origin of this annual day on which we pray and commit ourselves to saying “yes” to God’s desire for all His children to be at peace with Him and one another goes back to Pope St. Paul VI.  In an exhortation about devotion to Mary (“Marialis Cultus”), he explained how these two celebrations of Mary the Mother of God and the World Day of Peace go together:

It is likewise a fitting occasion for renewing adoration of the newborn Prince of Peace, for listening once more to the glad tidings of the angel, and for imploring from God, through the Queen of Peace, the supreme gift of peace. It is for this reason that, in the happy concurrence of the Octave of Christmas and the first day of the year, we have instituted the World Day of Peace….

This year, in his first Message for the World Day of Peace, Pope Leo echoed his predecessor:

Goodness is disarming. Perhaps this is why God became a child. The mystery of the Incarnation, which reaches its deepest descent even to the realm of the dead, begins in the womb of a young mother and is revealed in the manger in Bethlehem. “Peace on earth,” sing the angels, announcing the presence of a defenseless God, in whom humanity can discover itself as loved….

As we honor the Mother of the Son of God who reconciles us to the Father and to one another, let us resolve on this first day of 2026 to open ourselves in daily prayer to the peace that Jesus wants to give to our hearts and to our world.