The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Feast day: September 8
According to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was born to Sts. Joachim and Anne. Joachim had ventured out into the desert to lament their childlessness and learned in a vision that he and Anne would have a daughter. Ancient accounts place Mary’s birth in either Nazareth or Jerusalem. The feast of the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary originated in the East. In the seventh century, Pope St. Sergius I ordered that her birth and three other Marian feasts, the Annunciation, Purification and Assumption, be celebrated in Rome. The Catholic Church celebrates Mary’s birthday on September 8, nine months after the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.
Collect
Impart to your servants, we pray, O Lord,
the gift of heavenly grace,
that the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
may bring deeper peace
to those for whom the birth of her Son
was the dawning of salvation.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
