Pope Francis: With Mary's help, fill the new year with 'spiritual growth'

Vatican City, Jan 1, 2021 / 09:37 am MT (CNA).- The Virgin Mary’s motherly care encourages us to use our God-given time for building up the world and peace, not destroying it, Pope Francis said on New Year’s Day.

“The reassuring and comforting gaze of the Holy Virgin is an encouragement to make sure that this time, granted us by the Lord, might be spent for our human and spiritual growth,” the pope said Jan. 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

“That it be a time in which hatred and division are resolved, and there are many, that it be a time to experience ourselves as brothers and sisters, a time to build and not to destroy, to take care of each other and of creation,” he continued. “A time to make things grow a time of peace.”

Speaking via livestream from the library of the Apostolic Palace, Francis pointed to a nativity scene depicting St. Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the Child Jesus lying in Mary’s arms.

“We see that Jesus is not in the crib, and they told me that the Madonna said: ‘Won’t you let me hold this Son of mine a bit in my arms?’ This is what the Madonna does with us: she wants to hold us in her arms to protect us as she protected and loved her Son,” he stated.

According to Pope Francis, “Mary watches over us with maternal tenderness just as she watched over her Son Jesus…”

“May each one of us make sure that [2021] be for everyone a year of fraternal solidarity and peace, a year filled with expectant trust and