Feast day: September 12

The Most Holy Name of Mary

Marian Memorial · 1st century

Patron of —

A feast honoring the name of the Mother of God, extended to the whole Church in thanksgiving after the relief of Vienna in 1683 turned back the siege of the city.

The feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, kept on September 12, honors the name of the Mother of God, much as the Holy Name of Jesus is honored in January. To call upon Mary's name with love and trust has been, from early times, one of the simplest and dearest acts of Christian devotion — a name invoked in joy and in danger, in life and at the hour of death.

The feast began as a local Spanish celebration but was extended to the whole Church by Pope Innocent XI in thanksgiving for one of the great deliverances of European history. In 1683 a vast Ottoman army had laid siege to Vienna, and with it seemed to threaten all of Christian Europe; the city was on the point of falling when a relief army under the Polish king John Sobieski arrived and, in a great battle, broke the siege and turned the invaders back.

The victory came on September 12, and the king, who had placed his cause under the protection of Mary, declared that he had conquered in her name. In gratitude the pope ordered that the feast of the Holy Name of Mary be celebrated throughout the Church, so that the deliverance of Vienna might be remembered as her gift.

Beyond the historical occasion, the feast invites the faithful simply to love and honor Mary's name, and to call upon it with confidence. As devout writers have long urged, the name of Mary is a name of tenderness and of power, sweet to the faithful and a help in every need — a name, the Church prays, that brings to those who invoke it the loving protection of the Mother of God.

It was made universal to thank Mary for the Christian victory at Vienna in 1683 — won, the king said, under the banner of her holy name.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/10673b.htm