The Nativity of the Mother of God

What we celebrate

The parents of the Mother of God, Joachim and Anna, lived for many years without children. In the Israel of their day, childlessness was carried like a shame, and many saw in it a sign that God had forgotten you. Yet they never stopped praying and hoping. In their old age, their prayer was heard: a daughter was born to them, Mary, the one who would become the Mother of God.

That is why this feast celebrates long hope. God does not work in haste and noise: He prepares from afar, in the silence of an unknown family, what He wishes to give the whole world. In Romania, the feast bears the popular name "Sfânta Maria Mică" (Saint Mary the Small), in contrast with the Dormition of the Mother of God on August 15.

How do we know, if the Gospels do not tell of Mary's birth?

It is an honest question, and it deserves an honest answer. The Gospels say nothing about the birth and childhood of the Mother of God. The account of Joachim and Anna comes from an ancient Christian writing of the second century called the Protoevangelium of James. The Church did not receive this text into the canon of Scripture, we do not read it as a Gospel, but she kept from it what corresponds to her faith: the names of the parents, the long waiting, the birth received as a gift. By the sixth century at the latest, the feast was already kept in the Christian East.

In other words, the foundation of the feast is not a document but the living devotion of the Church, which surrounded the person of the Mother of God from the beginning. And the weight of her beginning comes from the One who was born of her: Christ.

The meaning of the feast

The liturgical year begins on September 1, and its first great feast is the birth of the Mother of God; toward the end of the year, in August, stands her Dormition. Between these two markers, the year of the Church carries the whole history of salvation, and that history opens humbly, with a child.

The service of the feast sings of Mary's birth as an announcement of joy to the whole world: from her will rise Christ, the "Sun of righteousness" (cf. Malachi 4:2), the One who scatters the darkness. From a womb thought barren, God brings forth life — a sign that no human situation is closed to Him. What seemed an end proves to be a beginning.

The feast says one more thing, simple and deep: God is patient. Joachim and Anna waited a lifetime. Anyone who has long been praying for something and does not yet see the answer can recognize themselves in them.