The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
A Birthday Love Letter to
Our Lady - September 8
Written by: James Dacey, Jr. OFS
Somewhere in
Jerusalem, on a day nobody wrote down, and no one could have known mattered, yet
a little girl was born. There was no fanfare. No star in the sky, no shepherds,
no angels singing over the rooftops, that would come later, for her Son. Just
an older couple who had prayed for years for a child they'd nearly given up
hoping for, and a baby girl in her mother's arms at last. And yet, of every
birth in the history of the world except One, this is the birth the whole
Church still stops to celebrate. Because the moment Mary drew her first breath,
everything that was coming- the angel, the yes, the manger, the cross, all of
it, quietly began.
Her parents were
Joachim and Anne, and by the time she came, they had already spent a lifetime
waiting.¹ They were an older couple, married many years, and childless, the
kind of quiet sorrow that never fully leaves a home. Joachim loved God so
deeply that when the weight of it became too much to carry, he went out alone
into the desert and fasted there forty days and nights, praying the same prayer
over and over: he would not eat, he would not drink, until God looked upon
him.² Anne prayed too, back home, promising that if a child ever came, she
would give that child back to God with her whole heart, holding nothing back.
And then, in the same breathtaking moment, an angel came to each of them, to
Anne first, and then to Joachim out among his flocks, carrying the very same
news: your prayer has been heard. After all those years of silence, heaven
finally answered.³
Picture this blessed
scene: Joachim coming down from the hills, hurrying now, his flocks trailing
behind him, his heart pounding with news he could hardly believe. And Anne, who
could have waited quietly inside, ran instead, out through the city gate, arms
open, and threw them around her husband's neck before he'd even said a word.⁴
Two people who had carried their grief separately for so long, suddenly wrapped
up in the same joy at the same moment. It's such a tender picture that artists
have been painting it for seven hundred years; that embrace at the gate has
appeared in churches and chapels across the world, because something about it
just captures what hope finally answered actually looks like.⁵ Not a quiet
relief. A running, weeping, can't-hold-it-in kind of joy. And nine months
later, in that same home in Jerusalem, Mary was born.
The Church has
marked this birthday for well over a thousand years, going back to a church
built in Jerusalem on the very spot where tradition says Joachim and Anne's
home once stood.⁶ And there's something quietly beautiful about where September
8 sits on the calendar: exactly nine months after December 8, the day we
celebrate her being conceived without sin.⁷ Two dates, nine months apart,
telling one continuous story: her beginning, and then her birth, just like any
child, except this child would one day carry God Himself inside her. Pope Paul
VI once called this day "the dawn of salvation," and it's hard to
think of a better way to say it.⁸ Nothing about that first morning looked like
the start of the world's rescue. It looked like an ordinary birth, in an
ordinary home, to two ordinary parents who had simply never stopped believing
God was listening. And that's usually how God works, quietly, in the ordinary,
until one day you look back and realize the ordinary was never ordinary at all.
That's the whole
heart of it, really; she was never the destination. She was always the way
there. "Per Mariam ad Jesum," the old phrase goes To Jesus,
through Mary.⁹ Every soul who has ever given their life over to serving her
has discovered the same thing: that loving her doesn't pull you away from
Christ; it walks you straight to Him, the way a mother has always known exactly
how to lead a child home. The Legion of Mary prays an antiphon that could have
been written for this very day: "Who is she that comes forth as the
morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun?" And the answer
they give back is simple: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us
who have recourse to thee."¹⁰ On her birthday, that's still the only
fitting response. Not just admiration from a distance, but recourse, running to
her, the way Anne once ran to Joachim at the gate, certain that whatever we're
carrying, she already knows the way through it. Because she always leads us to Jesus. She always has, and she always will.
Happy birthday,
dear Mother.
Thank you for the
day you were born, and for every day since that you have never once stopped
watching over us.
Thank you for
saying yes, so completely,
so that Jesus could come to us through you.
Lead us always to
your Son, today and every day,
until we meet you both face to face. Amen.
Sources
1. The story of
Joachim and Anne comes from the Protoevangelium of James, a 2nd-century
apocryphal text not included in Scripture but long received by the Church as
pious tradition; see Franciscan Media, "Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
Mary," franciscanmedia.org, and EWTN, "The Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin Mary," ewtn.com.
2. Protoevangelium
of James, 4:1–2, trans. Alexander Walker, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8
(Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886).
3. Protoevangelium
of James, 4:2–4.
4. The meeting and
embrace of Joachim and Anne at Jerusalem's gate is a traditional scene drawn
from the Protoevangelium of James and later accounts including the Golden
Legend of Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1260).
5. The scene, known
as "Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate," became a popular
subject in Christian art, notably Giotto's fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel,
Padua (c. 1305).
6. Vatican News,
"Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary," vaticannews.va;
Vatican State, "8 September: Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,"
vaticanstate.va.
7. Franciscan Media,
"Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary," franciscanmedia.org; EWTN,
"The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary," ewtn.com.
8. Pope Paul VI,
Marialis Cultus (1974), quoted in "Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary –
Dawn of Salvation," National Shrine of Mary, Mother of the Church,
thenationalshrineofmarymotherofthechurch.com.
9. "Per Mariam
ad Jesum" ("To Jesus through Mary") reflects the Marian
spirituality of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, foundational to the Legion of
Mary; Legion of Mary Handbook, legionofmary.ie.
10. The Catena
Legionis (Chain of the Legion), the daily prayer of the Legion of Mary, opens
with this antiphon and response; Legion of Mary Prayers,
legionofmaryottawa.com.
