Merry 8th Day of Christmas, New Year's Day

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Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: Bl. Newman for the occasion:

As she was once on earth, and was personally the guardian of her Divine Child, as she carried Him in her womb, folded Him in her embrace, and suckled Him at her breast, so now, and to the latest hour of the Church, do her glories and the devotion paid her proclaim and define the right faith concerning Him as God and man. Every church which is dedicated to her, every altar which is raised under her invocation, every image which represents her, every litany in her praise, every Hail Mary for her continual memory, does but remind us that there was One who, though He was all-blessed from all eternity, yet for the sake of sinners, “did not shrink from the Virgin’s womb.” 
Thus she is the Turris Davidica, as the Church calls her, “the Tower of David”; the high and strong defence of the King of the true Israel; and hence the Church also addresses her in the Antiphon, as having “alone destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”And here, my brethren, a fresh thought opens upon us, which is naturally implied in what has been said. If the Deipara is to witness of Emmanuel, she must be necessarily more than the Deipara. For consider; a defence must be strong in order to be a defence. . . . 
It would not have sufficed, in order to bring out and impress on us the idea that God is man, had His Mother been an ordinary person. A mother without a home in the Church, without dignity, without gifts, would have been, as far as the defence of the Incarnation goes, no mother at all.She would not have remained in the memory, or the imagination of men. If she is to witness and remind the world that God became man, she must be on a high and eminent station for the purpose. She must be made to fill the mind, in order to suggest the lesson. When she once attracts our attention, then, and not till then, she begins to preach Jesus.