Feast day: September 8
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Church celebrates the birth of Mary, kept nine months after the feast of her Immaculate Conception, honoring the dawn that heralded the coming of the Sun of Justice.
On September 8 the Church celebrates the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is one of only three birthdays kept in the Church's calendar — those of Jesus, of John the Baptist, and of Mary — for ordinarily the saints are honored on the day of their death, their birth into heaven; but these three births were themselves part of the dawning of salvation, and so are celebrated as well.
The Scriptures say nothing of Mary's birth, and what tradition holds comes from early Christian writings outside the Bible, especially the second-century 'Protoevangelium of James,' which names her parents as Joachim and Anne, a devout and childless couple to whom, in their old age, a daughter was at last given and dedicated to God. The Church does not vouch for the details, but honors the truth they enshrine: that Mary's coming was a gift and a grace.
The feast arose first in the Christian East, where a hymn for it survives from the sixth century, and was gradually adopted at Rome. Its date was deliberately set nine months after December 8, the feast of Mary's Immaculate Conception, joining her conception and her birth as the morning star and the dawn that herald the rising sun.
For that is how the Church reads this feast: as the near approach of redemption. The birth of the girl who would become the Mother of God is celebrated as the first light before daybreak — the one whose 'yes' would open the world to its Savior, now herself newly born into it.
Hers is one of only three birthdays the Church celebrates — Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary — because her birth was the near dawn of salvation.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/10712b.htm
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