The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast Day: September 8

The feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on September 8th, honours the physical birth of the woman who was to become the Mother of God. It is one of only three birthdays celebrated in the liturgical calendar, the others being those of Our Lord on December 25th and of Saint John the Baptist on June 24th. The fact that the Church celebrates Mary's birth, as it celebrates the birth of her Son and of His Forerunner, is a sign of her unique holiness: she was sanctified in the womb, as John was, and preserved from original sin by the singular grace of the Immaculate Conception.

The scriptural and historical details of Mary's birth are not found in the New Testament, which begins its account of her life only with the Annunciation. The tradition of her parentage, her birth, and her early childhood is preserved in the apocryphal Gospel of James, written in the second century, which records her parents' names as Joachim and Anne, their long childlessness, their prayer and fasting, the angelic announcement of her conception, and her birth and presentation in the temple at the age of three.

The feast of the Nativity of Mary originated in Jerusalem, where a church was built over the traditional site of her birthplace near the Pool of Bethesda, and from there it spread to Constantinople and then to Rome, where it was already being celebrated in the seventh century. The date of September 8th is exactly nine months after December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, following the natural logic of the liturgical calendar.

The birth of Mary is the dawn that precedes the Sunrise of the Incarnation. The Church greets this feast with joy, seeing in the birth of this child the beginning of the redemption that her Son would accomplish. The ancient antiphon for this feast, Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, announced joy to the whole world, for from you arose the Sun of Justice, Christ our God, who, taking away the curse, gave a blessing, and, confounding death, granted us everlasting life, summarises the theology of the feast with great beauty.