Mary is the True Star of Bethlehem

Fr. Brian Moore SJ (Christmas Scenes, p. 27), makes an appropriate observation about the Star that the Magi saw, upon their departure from Herod: “Perhaps, in quite another perspective, we might say that the star was Mary herself with whom, on entering the house at their journey’s end, the Magi found the Child (Matthew 2:11) as has the shepherds at the stable – together with whom the Wise Men became the first to experience the truth that as Jesus comes to us through Mary so through Mary we come to Jesus. Through the long night of the human race since the Fall, she, the woman foretold from the beginning (Genesis 3:15) was the bright and guiding star of the hopes of men, assuring them of the birth of a Saviour as the morning star assures us of the dawning of the day. And what she was for the human race she is for each of us who, seeking Christ, will, as the Magi did, always find him with Mary his Mother.

As St. Bernard said: Respice Stellam; respice Mariam – “Fix your eyes on the Star; fix your eyes on Mary”.

And we conclude with these beautiful words from John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater: “… the Church has constantly been aware that Mary appeared on the horizon of salvation history before Christ …. Therefore … in this present period we wish to turn in a special way to Her, the one who in the “night” of the Advent expectation began to shine like a true “Morning Star” (Stella Matutina). For just as this star, together with the “dawn”, precedes the rising of the sun, so Mary from the time of her Immaculate Conception preceded the coming of the Saviour, the rising of the “Sun of Justice” in the history of the human race” (Ch. I #3, pp. 10-11)