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The Nativity of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary: Friday, 8 September

By Fr. Philip Sandstrom


Kraainem (19 August 2006).- 

Each year the Church, East and West, celebrates three Birthdays. She keeps Birthdays for Saint John the Baptist (24 June), for Jesus, Son of Mary and Son of God (25 December), and the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary (8 September). 

It must be said immediately all these dates are ‘official birthdates’ (just as the Queen of England sets a ‘birth date’ for the parade of the Horse Guards), and have nothing to do with the actual or real birthdates. 

At the time of the Emperor Constantine the Church decided to connect the ‘sun calendar’ to the annual round of feasts and put Saint John’s feast at ‘mid-summer’ and six months later Jesus’ birthday at ‘mid-winter’. This was thought appropriate for the play of light in the Northern Hemisphere tied in with the Scriptural indication that John was the ‘greatest man born of woman’ and the ‘greatest prophet of the Old Testament’ whose task was to see its fulfillment and also to point out the presence of the Lamb of God, the Messiah Jesus as the beginning of the ‘new light of God on earth’, the New Covenant whose light grows and grows till the End of Time. 

The Church keeps the Virgin Mary’s Birthday Feast for a different reason. It was at its start a Church Dedication Feast for a church built in the 5th century in Jerusalem, north of the Temple Mount and near the ponds of Bethsaida where Jesus cured a sick man (John 5:1-19). 

As with a number of other feasts and customs – notably how we celebrate Holy Week –pilgrims to the Holy Land brought back to their homelands the ‘ways of doing feasts and liturgy’ that they had observed in the land where Jesus, Mary and the Apostles lived. 

So this Feast spread throughout the whole Church, being mentioned in Rome by Pope Sergius I at the end of the 7th century. By the 8th century it was common in the Eastern part of the Church too. 

The Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the 12 Great Feasts which we in the West share with our Eastern Church Brethren. 

If you look at the iconostasis in a Byzantine Church there is a band of 12 images of these Feasts, and when you look up at the stained glass of the Cathedral of Chartres in France you will see the same group of iconic images. 

So let us join the rest of the Church and keep the Birthday of Mary, the Virgin-Mother of our Lord!

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