26 December 2026 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
The day after Christmas the Syriac tradition turns to the one through whom the Word took flesh. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” Mary is not a decoration of the feast but the human door through which God entered history. Because she said yes, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” and we are no longer slaves but children and heirs.
The shepherds hurry to Bethlehem and find Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. They tell everyone what the angels said, and all who hear are amazed. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” The crowd is amazed for a moment; Mary keeps and ponders for a lifetime. She is the model of every believer who wants Christmas to last beyond one day.
Theme: “Mary treasured all these words.”
Praise of the Mother of God.
“Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
“And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”” Galatians 4:6
Apply: Pray the Hail Mary slowly with your family.
“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel,” Micah 5:2
“So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” Luke 2:16
Apply: Visit the crib in your parish church.
“I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.” Psalm 119:11
“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
Apply: Sit before the crib in silence for ten minutes.
Mary gave us the Saviour.
With her, let us keep and ponder.
Take-home resolution: Pray one decade of the Rosary each day of the Christmas season.
Dear friends, the day after Yaldo our Church celebrates the Praise of the Holy Mother of God, honouring Mary who gave birth to the Saviour. The Eastern Churches have always joined the Mother to the feast of her Son.
St Paul writes: when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father! (Galatians 4:4–6).
Born of a woman. Mary is the bridge by which God entered our humanity. That is why the Church calls her Theotokos, Mother of God: not because she is the source of the divine nature, but because the One born of her is truly God (Council of Ephesus, AD 431).
In the Gospel the shepherds go with haste to Bethlehem and find Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. They tell what they have heard about the child, and all who hear are amazed. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:16–19).
Everyone else is talking and wondering. Mary is silent, treasuring, pondering. She keeps the mystery in her heart and lets it grow. This is how she becomes the first disciple.
After the noise of Yaldo, let us learn from Mary to ponder. Let us take a quiet moment each day this week to sit before the crib and treasure what God has done. And let us praise Mary, as our hymns do, as the one who carried the One whom the heavens cannot contain. Amen.
Children, Mary kept everything about Jesus in her heart. Think about baby Jesus quietly for a minute today!
Holy Mother of God, through you the Word took flesh. Teach us to treasure and ponder the mystery of your Son, as the shepherds hurry to see him and the angels sing his glory. Amen.
The day after Yaldo, the Syriac tradition turns in gratitude to the one through whom the Word took flesh. The two readings are very short, and they speak of Mary with very few words. Paul does not even give her name: God sent his Son, “born of a woman”. Luke shows her in silence, while shepherds talk and everyone is amazed: “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”.
Together the readings teach why the Church praises Mary, and how she should be praised. Galatians tells us what happened through her: the eternal Son entered our history and made us children of God. Luke tells us how she lived it: she kept and pondered it. We praise her, and we learn from her. The key words of this day are born, children and treasured.
Setting.
Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, whom outside teachers are urging to take on circumcision and the Law of Moses. In the verses just before this reading he has compared people under the Law to an heir who is still a child, no better off than a slave until the date set by his father (4:1–3). This is the turning point of the comparison: the date has come.
Galatians is one of the earliest writings of the New Testament, written some decades before the Gospels. These four verses are the only place where Paul refers, even indirectly, to the mother of Jesus. They contain, in a small space, the Father who sends, the Son who is sent, and the Spirit who cries out in our hearts.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,” (4:4)
“Sent” implies that the Son existed before he was born. “Born of a woman” implies that he is truly human. In one verse Paul has the whole faith of Yaldo: truly God's Son, and truly Mary's. “Born under the law” means that he is a son of Israel, circumcised on the eighth day, keeping the Law and fulfilling it.
“in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” (4:5)
Exagorazō means to buy back, to pay the price of someone's release. It is used for a slave bought out of slavery. The purpose of the Incarnation is told here in a sentence: the Son of God became a son of Mary so that the sons and daughters of Adam might become children of God.
“And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”” (4:6)
Paul moves from “you” to “our”, including himself and his readers together. It is the Spirit who cries; Romans 8:15 says that we cry. Christian prayer is the Spirit praying the Son's own prayer in us. The Catechism quotes this verse on the Spirit's work (CCC 742).
“So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” (4:7)
“You” is now singular: Paul is speaking to each reader personally. The inheritance is “through God”: it remains a gift to the end.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council begins its chapter on Mary in Lumen Gentium with this very text (LG 52). The Catechism cites it in presenting the mystery of Christ (CCC 422), sees in the Annunciation the beginning of “the fullness of time” (CCC 484), and adds that God sent his Son, but asked for the willing co-operation of a creature in preparing a body for him (CCC 488).
St Irenaeus uses the phrase “born of a woman” against those who thought that the Son was not truly human; he says that the Son of God truly took flesh from the Virgin (in substance, Against Heresies 3.22). The Syriac tradition, using its own word Yoldath Aloho, “she who gave birth to God”, holds to the same truth that this verse teaches: the One born of her is God's own Son.
Setting.
The angels have just told the shepherds the news: “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior” (2:11). Bethlehem, David's town, was shepherds' country, the fields where David had kept his father's sheep (1 Samuel 16:11). These people are ordinary working men at the bottom of the social ladder, and God's first announcement of the birth goes to them, and not to the palace.
Luke is the Gospel that shows Mary most closely. Near the start of his Gospel he says that he writes after “investigating everything carefully” (1:3). Twice in the infancy story he describes Mary keeping these things in her heart: here and after the finding in the Temple (2:51). Readers have long wondered whether this is a hint of where some of his information came from. It cannot be proved, but it is a natural thought.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”” (2:15)
The shepherds' question is the right one for a believer: God has spoken, so let us go and see. They do not ask for further proof before setting out.
“So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” (2:16)
The sign the angel had given them (2:12) was very ordinary: a baby in a feeding trough. Only faith could see a Savior in it. Mary is named first, then Joseph, and last the child, who is at the centre of the scene.
“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” (2:19)
“But” sets her apart from the amazed crowd. Wonder that does not go deep soon fades. In the Bible the heart is not only the place of feeling, but the centre of a person's thinking and choosing. So Mary is not simply being moved here: she is keeping faith with what she does not yet fully understand.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council takes up this verse to describe how the Church's understanding of revelation grows: through the contemplation and study of believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (Dei Verbum 8, citing Luke 2:19, 51; see CCC 94). Mary is therefore not simply a good example. In her, the Church sees what the Church herself is called to do with the Word.
The Council says that the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith (Lumen Gentium 58), and St John Paul II writes in Redemptoris Mater that her faith had a real journey. St Augustine says that she conceived Christ in her mind before she conceived him in her womb (in substance, Sermon 215). St Ephrem marvels in his Hymns on the Nativity that Mary is at once her Son's mother, sister and bride (in substance).
Why is there a feast of Mary the day after Christmas? Doesn't it take attention away from Jesus?
It does the reverse. The feast follows Yaldo because it depends on Yaldo: Mary is praised for who was born of her. The Byzantine Churches keep the same day as the Synaxis of the Mother of God, so the custom is broad among Eastern Christians. In this way the Church protects the truth of the Incarnation: he has a real mother, and she is the proof that he is really one of us.
How can a human being be called “Mother of God”? She did not give God his divine nature.
That is correct, and the Church has never said that she did. A mother is mother of a person, not of a nature. The One born of Mary is one Person, the eternal Son of God, who took from her his human nature. So she is truly Mother of God, which is what the Council of Ephesus in 431 confessed in the word Theotokos (CCC 466, 495). The title is first of all a statement about Christ. The Syriac Yoldath Aloho says the same.
Did Mary already know everything about her Son?
The text suggests not. Luke says that she treasured and pondered, and that she and Joseph did not understand what Jesus said in the Temple (2:50). Mary was without sin, but she was not spared the walk of faith. The Council calls it a “pilgrimage of faith” (Lumen Gentium 58). This should encourage believers who also must keep and wait, without understanding everything.
On this second day of Yaldo the Malankara Church praises the Mother of God, as the Syriac Churches have long done. Hymns on Mary fill the West Syriac tradition, from St Ephrem to Mar Jacob of Serugh, whose homilies on the Mother of God are still read, and the faithful honour her in the Holy Qurbono, where the Body born of her is given to us. It is good to keep Christmas in the way this day teaches: to go on holding the mystery in the heart after the crowds and the excitement have gone, as she did.