Jan1A23.   Numbers 6:22-27.    This was God’s blessing upon his People, the Israelites.  God is the ultimate and only true source of anything and everything that is good.  To be blessed by God is to have the dam gates of God’s goodness open to flow upon us.  We begin the New Year as a year once again filled with God’s loving goodness and kindness.

Luke 2:16-21.  The Almighty Glorious God is born into abysmally impoverished circumstances to suffer horribly as an adult in a wretched death in order to offer himself up out of immeasurable love for us.  He, who, as an infant, was laid in an animal’s feeding trough or manger, was to later be nailed to an executioner’s cross.  Everything about his coming into this world as human, yet remaining divine but letting go of all the wonders of his divinity, proclaims the unfathomable depths of his love for us.  Only the most humble, like the shepherds, can recognize him for whom he truly is.  Mary, even though she was his mother, had to keep record in her memory (taking notes, so to speak) of the events and circumstances surrounding her son that helped her to understand who he was and what he was all about.  As good Jews, his earthly parents had him circumcised, as a part of raising him as a good Jew.  He was Jesus, God become man to save us from our sins.

Galatians 4:4-7.   “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  God gave the law or the Torah to the Hebrew People to enable them to grow up or mature in holiness.  The time came in the mind of God for his People to have matured enough under the Law so to finally receive the fullness of his presence in his Son Jesus and so dispose of any further need of the Old Testament Law.  With the arrival of his Son and through the saving work of his Son, we ourselves have been called to be his very sons and daughters.