The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the feast celebrating the birth of Mary, the daughter of Joachim and Anne who was chosen from all eternity to become the Mother of God. It is one of only three birthdays honored in the Church's calendar — those of Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, and of St. John the Baptist — because Mary's coming into the world was the dawn that heralded the rising of the Sun of Justice, the near approach of humanity's salvation in her Son.

The feast arose in the Christian East and spread to Rome by the seventh century, and it is fittingly kept on 8 September, exactly nine months after the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December. In celebrating the birth of her whom the liturgy hails as full of grace, the Church rejoices that the long expectation of the patriarchs and prophets drew near to its fulfillment, for through this child would come the Redeemer of the world.