"Mary's experience, we can imagine, must have been amazing. Mary of Nazareth is not just the Mother of God, not just Christ's Mother. She's his first disciple, his first follower.
No one had heard of him until she had when the angel appeared and called her full of grace, which was curious to her. And then also said, a son will be born of you. You'll name him Jesus. She's the first to hear about Jesus. She then has, we don't know what it was like, she has an experience of being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. She miraculously becomes pregnant with Christ. She goes to Elizabeth, she can't hold it in. She sings for joy.
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It's the stress of a census. And she's traveling with Joseph, and there, Christ is born. She wraps him in swaddling clothes. They have no place for them... So, they're there in a stable. She lays him in an animal feeding trough. She feeds him from her own body. And as if that just wasn't enough—this experience of her and the holy family—then people start coming through the door. This was not a private event.
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Jesus, since he arrives on this earth, his grace starts to spread and the message spreads and it cannot be contained. From his first moments, it’s all of a sudden made public. Shepherds knock on the door, and Mary’s pure, she's immaculate, but she's not God. And she's not a omniscient. And she's wondering like the rest of us, “what's this? Now we've been through a lot.” And the shepherds speak to them, and they come and they see the mother and her child and they tell of angels singing in the sky. A host of angels praising God. And the wonder deepens in Mary.
And in a couple of days, the arrival of kings will knock on her door. And there's this deep sense of what the church calls “adoration”. It's not just an experience for Mary where she's scattered. All of these experiences are focused on her son, who is also the son of God, and thinking how all things of heaven and earth start with her."
Reflection by Fr. Timothy Danaher, O.P.
