With Australia being amongst the first countries on earth to ring in the New Year, Sydney’s Catholic parishes had the added blessing of celebrating the first Holy Masses for 2025.
From Lidcombe to Liverpool and churches in between, thousands of Catholics filled their parishes to give thanks to God for the year that has been and to pray for the year to come.
The first day of January is a date that the church not only solemnly celebrates the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as the Mother of God, but it concludes the Christmas Octave and universally prays for world peace.
As per the Catholic custom, the final hour of the year is spent before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration and is followed by a Solemn Midnight Mass, thus ending 2024 and beginning 2025 in the presence of Our Lord.
Fr Greg Morgan, from St Catherine Laboure parish, used his homily during the midnight Mass to speak on Mary as the Mother of God.
The Gymea parish priest invited each of those present to make 2025 a year in which they explore the depths of their own hearts, looking to Mary as the ultimate example.
In Sydney’s west, Somascan Fr Chris de Sousa CRS spoke on the three major points of celebration for 1 January with Our Blessed Mother as the thread that tied them all together.
“When we were baptised, we became brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, through uniting ourselves to him we could ‘receive adoption as sons’ of God,” said the assistant priest at St Joseph’s Moorebank and St Christopher’s Holsworthy.
“We also call Mary ‘Mother,’ just as Christ, our brother, does and if Jesus is the Prince of Peace, then Mary is the Queen of Peace.
“If we truly want to experience peace in our hearts, our families, and peace in our world, we can do no better than to follow the example of our prince and our queen.
“My dear brother and sisters, if we follow our Mother’s example, by keeping Christ the light of the world in the spotlight of our hearts, his grace will gradually heal our wounds, strengthen our weakness, resolve our conflicts, and bring us more and more of his peace.”
While celebrating the Mass for the solemnity at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Pope Francis pleaded for peace and the protection of human life, calling for “a firm commitment to promote respect for the dignity of human life, from conception to natural death.”
The Pontiff brought together the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and the 58th World Day of Peace by emphasising that “Protecting life, caring for wounded life, restoring dignity to the life of every ‘born of woman’ is the fundamental basis for building a civilization of peace.”
Pope Francis concluded by entrusting the new jubilee year to Mary, praying that “hope may be reborn and peace may finally spring up for all the peoples of the earth.”
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God originated from the Council of Ephesus in 431, where the title “Mother of God” (Theotokos) was confirmed for Mary.
Throughout history, there have been many movements to establish a feast honouring Mary as the Mother of God, however, this solemnity only became an official one in the 20th century when Pope Paul VI encouraged the restoration of the Solemnity of Mary, the holy Mother of God, in his apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus on 2 February, 1974.
