Friday is the Feast Day of the Nativity of Mary

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. St. Romanus, a sixth-century lyricist in the Eastern tradition, first refers to the feast. The tradition spread and was celebrated in Rome within a century. The Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal gospel from the 2nd century, tells us the account of Our Lady’s birth. Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, longed for a child. Anna prayed to the Lord and in response, God sent an angel telling her she’d conceive. When Mary was born, the couple rejoiced, vowing to make their daughter a gift unto the Lord. Her birth becomes, as John Paul II wrote, “…the purest dawn of our Redemption,” as her life brought forth the coming of our Savior. [