There are some Feast days in the Church that can come and go quickly, and we miss them without a thought or whimper… unfortunately.  We celebrated such a day this past Thursday, September 8. On this date each year, we celebrate the birth of Blessed Mary.  This date, of course, is exactly nine months after December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.  On that day we do not celebrate the conception of Jesus in the holy womb of his mother Mary.  That would be the Annunciation on March 25, which is exactly nine months prior to Christmas Day and the birth of the world’s Savior. We celebrate rather, on December 8, the conception of Blessed Mary in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, a name every member of this Parish is familiar with.

Us Catholics have a way of getting these two Church days and holy conceptions mixed up.  I remember receiving a phone call from a dear friend of mine a handful of years ago, and she asked me, “Is today (December 8) the conception of Jesus?  And if so, how was he born on December 25?  Wouldn’t that be a rather short pregnancy?” Yes, Christine,” I answered, “it would be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest healthy pregnancy that ever happened.”  I’m surprised she didn’t hang up on the Irish/Italian/Polish humor.  Either way, I went on the explain the dates and celebrations, match up the nine-month process of pregnancy for both Jesus and Mary regarding their conception and birth, and settle the matter with common biological sense and understanding for future reference.

There’s something about this past Thursday’s celebration of Blessed Mary’s birthday that I love just as much as Christmas and the birth of her Son.  Granted, as far as births go, nothing comes before “the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  No one and nothing sits in our hearts – or shouldn’t – before the birth of our Savior.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he is the Resurrection and the Life, he is the door that leads to heaven, he is the Vine and we are the branches, with many more literal and symbolic truths about who he is.  The New Testament Scriptures are filled with such words about the Christ.  He is Lord, Savior, and Redeemer.  Creator of the universe and planets and stars, the One who said softly, “Let there be light” when nothing existed except for God.  And having a small sense of the enormity of the universe, which our minds cannot fully comprehend, our Creator God founded an awful lot of space out there when there was no space for astronomers, scientists, and other folks to study and marvel over as a way of keeping us entertained.

You get the point.  In our faith lives, and in the entirety of our lives, no one and nothing comes before the One who saves us from our sins, which are daily and many.  With that said, the birthday of our Blessed Mother is a day each year when gifts are not given to one another, at least not for the occasion of her birthday.  Rather, it’s a day when “Black Friday” is not part of the makeup of the celebration, a day when Mary’s birthday has no degree of anticipation of it like Christmas, for it comes and goes in one day, and many Catholics remain unaware that Mary’s birthday came and went. And there is no pre-season leading up to, and in preparation for, Mary’s birthday, like the Season of Advent and the birth of Mary’s Son.  The four weeks prior to Mary’s birthday is not a season of repentance, although every day in the Church is a “season of repentance.”  There is no hearing of a familiar statement like “between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” such as “between the Assumption and Mary’s birth.” Again, we get the point.

The last thing I wish to do here is give businesses another religious season of large profits being pocketed, where the meaning of Mary’s birth is taken over by capitalism at its best.  Is this not what the Christmas season has become?  I wonder if retail businesses have searched for a second season of immense profits, so immense that it helps their business stay open for another year like the profitability of Christmas does.  I sense this was not a concern at Christmas in the Middle Ages.  Or even during the Victorian Period.  We do have a way of bringing much of life and its various celebrations back to money, do we not?  I pray I have not opened up a can of worms for a second season of immense profits centered on the celebration of a beautiful religious holiday and birth of someone quite important.

Our Blessed Lady’s birthday is important to us Catholics for a handful of reasons.  A reason or two may be realized in the natural beauty of the day itself, and the wholeness, purity, and holiness of what and who we celebrate.  God knows we need a return to some greater degree of holiness and purity in a world that grows more and more profane, meaning corrupt where no part of life is sacred any longer.  I do believe the day is coming when the ruthlessness and corruptibility of our present culture will return to a greater semblance of holiness, modesty, and genuine goodness absent much of the present confusion found in human hearts, and what we see being practiced openly and stubbornly.  I hope I live long enough to witness the good turnaround for your children and grandchildren.

Mary’s birthday is a day of all that is good to be found, not only in the created person, but in the absolute beauty of the female, of womanhood, of femininity, and the awesomeness of being a child-bearer.  One of the greatnesses of Our Lady’s birthday is the total absence of profanation in her birth, and the total presence of all that is good in how God created us to be.  As stated above, there is a naturalness to such goodness, some of which we’ve lost and in need of being recaptured.  Mary embraced the goodness of her life in the fullest sense, “I am the handmaid of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.”  If there is anything in this world better and healthier than doing God’s will to perfection, then please inform yours truly of what you found. In the meantime, Mary’s perfect life of “being in sync” with all things God and Creator remains the model for the entire world for all generations and times. The Lady from Nazareth is the most natural person who ever lived.

Another reason for us Catholics to be aware of Mary’s birthday is the Gospel reading the Church provides for the Feast Day of September 8. The Gospel is taken from Matthew, and begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ.  I love either reading myself, or listening to a deacon or another priest read the many names that make up the ancestry of our Lord.  It’s impressive if the priest or deacon has the many names memorized, which I do not.  And I don’t plan on it anytime soon.  But after the genealogy in the first half of the reading, the Gospel for September 8 then transfers into what is familiarly known as the Christmas story:  “Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about…”  A taste of Christmas in September.  Don’t tell the business world this religious fact, otherwise they’ll extend the Christmas season to begin in the ninth month.  October is already way too early.  However, the Gospel for Mary’s birthday does provide an early sense of good cheer and preparation for us Catholics in this part of the United States as the weather cools, which we tend to associate with sweatshirts, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  I guess the New England Patriots too.

A last, personal reason I love this Feast Day of Mary’s birth so much is the timing of Funeral Masses for two special woman I’ve been blessed to know over the years; my mother Marie and my Aunt Shirley.  In 2008 and 2009, they respectively had their Funeral Masses on September 8, the day of Mary’s birth.  It just turned out that way.  If there’s a feast day in the Church calendar when the Holy Funeral Mass is said for the repose of our souls, September 8 is one of the better ones.  We can be confident there are many graces flowing from above each year on this blessed Feast Day of Our Lady.  Each and every Marian solemnity or feast day should be special in the hearts of every Catholic worldwide.  This may not be the case always as misunderstandings of Marian theology abound, even in the Catholic world, about the centrality and strongest attachment of Mary’s life to our faith.  Wisely, not a Pontificate goes by without a Pope not constantly calling on Mary’s intercession for the good of our Church and our world.  This is most appropriate.  But Our Lady’s birthday is a very, very good date in the Church’s calendar for a Funeral Mass and all that invisibly happens for the good of a person’s soul.

So, after reading this (you three or four people!), feel free to grab some cake or other dessert and have a belated bite or two on behalf of the Queen of Heaven’s birthday. Consume the cake, chomp on the whoopie pie, chow down on the chocolate éclair, take in the frosted donut or cruller.  Say “Happy Birthday” to Our Most Blessed Mother, and while you’re thinking about her, ask her to intercede with her Son on your behalf, to place us and keep us on a path to heaven in a world we are called to transform into the light and peace, grace and holiness of Christ. She will be glad to adhere to our request, even if it’s past September 8.                                    
                                                                                           

HOLINESS 
The starting point of any Christian concept of holiness would be to stand in a relationship to God that would approximate the ideal set out by Jesus in his life and in his teaching.  That, in turn, would mean to live in a relationship with God by which we would see God as a loving Parent, after the manner of the “Abba experience” expressed in the life of Jesus.  “Abba” Is the favorite term for God on the lips of Jesus, which explains why the Scriptures retain its Aramaic form.  It reflects an intimacy with God, who is seen as a caring and compassionate Parent intimately involved with the life of Jesus. The prayer that Jesus taught begins with that phrase (in the original version of the Lord’s Prayer), and it is on the lips of Jesus as his agony begins in Gethsemane.                                                                                                       

Our capacity to call on God as “Abba” depends on the gift of the Spirit and demands, in turn, that our lives, in union with God as loving Parent, reflect the love of God for all creation.  The great Lukan parables of the Good Samaritan and the prodigal son reflect that love which is extended when one would ordinarily expect recrimination or neglect.  Jesus’ doctrine of love is unitary in that love of God and love of neighbor, already hallowed in the Hebrew tradition, are not discrete activities.                         

In the Gospel portraits of Jesus we see one of whose life is theocentric, in the sense that everything Jesus is and does falls under the loving eye of Abba.  To keep that in mind is to understand Jesus’ insistence that one cannot serve God and mammon, that God's providence extends to the smallest detail of the world, that God provides materially for those whose trust is complete.  In Johannine theology the theocentric nature of Jesus becomes so intimate that a reciprocity is worked out that involves more than mere faith on the part of Jesus:  Whatever the Father does, the Son will do also.  In the same discourse the Son raises the dead as the Father has done, just as he judges as the Father judges.  The conclusion is straightforward:  “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”  This relationship between Son and Father is so intimate that John's Gospel is characterized by a whole series of “I am” sayings, which echo God's holy name in the Book of Exodus.                                                                                                                                                From The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality