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Brendan
Guest
The USCCB declared Jan 1 to be a Holy Day of Obligation back in 1991.
A bishop may dispense the obligation in his diocese, but the designation still remains.
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A bishop may dispense the obligation in his diocese, but the designation still remains.
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drafdog
Guest
Perhaps the reason your priest did not mention Mary was because the feast is more about the divinity of Christ than it is about Mary. The nativity celebrates Christ’s humanity and the octave celebrates his divinity.
Matthew
Matthew
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benedictgal
Guest
I think you got it wrong, Matthew. Read this excerpt from the Holy Father’s homily for the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God:Perhaps the reason your priest did not mention Mary was because the feast is more about the divinity of Christ than it is about Mary. The nativity celebrates Christ’s humanity and the octave celebrates his divinity.
Matthew
Our thoughts now turn spontaneously to Our Lady, whom we invoke today as the Mother of God. It was Pope Paul VI who moved to 1 January the Feast of the Divine Motherhood of Mary, which was formerly celebrated on 11 October. Indeed, even before the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council, the memorial of the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day after his birth - as a sign of submission to the law, his official insertion in the Chosen People - used to be celebrated on the first day of the year and the Feast of the Name of Jesus was celebrated the following Sunday. We perceive a few traces of these celebrations in the Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed, in which St Luke says that eight days after his birth the Child was circumcised and was given the name “Jesus”, “the name given by the Angel before he was conceived in [his Mother’s]… womb” (Lk 2: 21). Today’s feast, therefore, as well as being a particularly significant Marian feast, also preserves a strongly Christological content because, we might say, before the Mother, it concerns the Son, Jesus, true God and true Man.
The Apostle Paul refers to the mystery of the divine motherhood of Mary, the Theotokos, in his Letter to the Galatians. “When the time had fully come”, he writes, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (4: 4). We find the mystery of the Incarnation of the Divine Word and the Divine Motherhood of Mary summed up in a few words: the Virgin’s great privilege is precisely to be Mother of the Son who is God. The most logical and proper place for this Marian feast is therefore eight days after Christmas. Indeed, in the night of Bethlehem, when “she gave birth to her first-born son” (Lk 2: 7), the prophesies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. “The virgin shall be with child and bear a son”, Isaiah had foretold (7: 14); “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son”, the Angel Gabriel said to Mary (Lk 1: 31); and again, an Angel of the Lord, the Evangelist Matthew recounts, appeared to Joseph in a dream to reassure him and said: “Do not fear to take Mary for your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son” (Mt 1: 20-21).
You can’t argue with the Holy Father on this one. Remember, too, that this is the oldest Marian feast day. The doctrine of Mary as the “Theokotos” came to us from the Council of Ephesus, held in the year 431, AD, which countered the Nestorian heresy. Perhaps you would do well to read up on Marian devotion. It will help you considerably to better understand why the Church does what she does.The title “Mother of God”, together with the title “Blessed Virgin”, is the oldest on which all the other titles with which Our Lady was venerated are based, and it continues to be invoked from generation to generation in the East and in the West. A multitude of hymns and a wealth of prayers of the Christian tradition refer to the mystery of her divine motherhood, such as, for example, a Marian antiphon of the Christmas season, Alma Redemptoris mater, with which we pray in these words: “Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, Virgo prius ac posterius - You, in the wonder of all creation, have brought forth your Creator, Mother ever virgin”. Dear brothers and sisters, let us today contemplate Mary, ever-virgin Mother of the Only-Begotten Son of the Father; let us learn from her to welcome the Child who was born for us in Bethlehem. If we recognize in the Child born of her the Eternal Son of God and accept him as our one Saviour, we can be called and we really are children of God: sons in the Son. The Apostle writes: “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4: 4).
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drafdog
Guest
ben-gal,
Please read again what the Pope said. Note that he is emphasizing the divinity of Christ. That is what the feast is about: the divinity of Christ. What we celebrate is the advent of the divine through human actions. The message is the transparency of the believer to the Godhead.
Matthew
Please read again what the Pope said. Note that he is emphasizing the divinity of Christ. That is what the feast is about: the divinity of Christ. What we celebrate is the advent of the divine through human actions. The message is the transparency of the believer to the Godhead.
Matthew
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pprimeau1976
Guest
On that PDF file, it says it was a “holy day of obligation dispensed”. I don’t know what that means, really. It’s a holy day of obligation that no one is obliged to celebrate?This is from the Diocese of San Diego website.
Jan 1 was a Holy Day of Obligation
diocese-sdiego.org/HolyDays0607.pdf
Jim
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Brendan
Guest
It is a Solemnity, but the local bishop has removed the obligation of the faithful to participate at Mass.On that PDF file, it says it was a “holy day of obligation dispensed”. I don’t know what that means, really. It’s a holy day of obligation that no one is obliged to celebrate?
One thing to keep in mind, the bishop may remove the obligation, but any Masses conducted that day should have been celebrated according to the rubrics of a Solemnity ( 2 Readings, the Gloria and Creed)
A bishop may dispense the obligatory nature of the day, but not it’s Solemn nature.
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leonie
Guest
Actually, you are creating a false dicotomy. The feast day celebrates Mary as Mother of God. Therefore, the feast day celebrate Jesus, child of Mary, as God.ben-gal,
Please read again what the Pope said. Note that he is emphasizing the divinity of Christ. That is what the feast is about: the divinity of Christ. What we celebrate is the advent of the divine through human actions. The message is the transparency of the believer to the Godhead.
Matthew
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