Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Feast Day: September 8
The details of Mary’s birth are unknown.
Her parents, not mentioned in the Bible, are called Joachim and Anne in the apocryphal Gospel of James.
This book claims that Joachim went into the desert to lament their childlessness and learned in a vision or dream that he and Anne would have a daughter.
Ancient traditions put Mary’s birth in Nazareth or Jerusalem.
The feast of her birth originated in the East; in the seventh century, Pope St. Sergius I ordered that it and three other Marian feasts, the Annunciation, Purification and Assumption, be celebrated in Rome.
This feast is another sign of God’s faithfulness to old and new covenant promises that were fully realized in Mary’s son, Jesus Christ.
