Things More Important Than New Year's Day

1. It's Sunday. This is the Lord's Day, and He has a right to be worshiped on this day in particular. It's also still a day of rest. In other words, all of your clean-up from any partying last night is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

2. Even if it wasn't Sunday, it would be the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. The fact that it's on New Year's Day has caused a lot of people to ignore what this day is all about. Of all Our Lady's gifts, including the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, her Divine Maternity is the greatest. As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange spells out, this gift is of the hypostatic order since it is basically the gift of the Incarnation. Not to mention that the graces of the other gifts flow from her dignity in this role.

I think it's pretty critical that we re-capture the meaning behind this Feast. Infiltration of the New Age movement has led to some people around here making some very confused statements about Christ's person that sound an awful lot like some kind of neo-Nestorianism. It's a bizarre thing. It's not that these folks are rejecting the Truth on purpose. They've just had their ears tickled. That doesn't make it any less blasphemous, though.

Read the Council of Ephesus. Think about what it means for the Blessed Mother to be the Theotokos. Not just for her, but for Jesus as well.

Oh, and Happy New Year as well, I guess.