Exult For Joy In The Lord

My friend Fr Lawrence Lew OP writes:

Today, the 8th of September, has been remembered as Our Lady’s birthday since the earliest centuries of Christianity. Indeed, it was the ancient Church in Syria, one of the first Christian communities with links to the first Christians of Jerusalem, that kept this tradition alive and shared it with us in the West. 

Some historians have thus worked out that Our Lady was most likely to have been born in Jerusalem in the year 19 BC, and in that year the 8th of September corresponded to the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Now, nothing happens by mere coincidence or chance in God’s Providence. Rather, all is wisely ordered by God, and all things come to be by his arrangement and point to his greatest work which is our salvation. 

So, Rosh Hashanah, in the Jewish tradition, marks the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the dawn of creation. Therefore, on the day of Mary’s birth, on the 8th of September in 19 BC, the Lord God was signalling the birth of she who is the New Eve, the true Mother of all the Living, and indeed, through whom God brings about a new creation of humanity restored to new life by the grace of Christ.

Already, the transforming power of the Saviour is preeminently manifest in the person of Mary. In her, the promise for salvation for all humanity is first brought to perfection. For she is immaculately conceived, freed from the stranglehold of sin under which we are born, and so, we celebrate her birthday because she, along with Our Lord and St John the Baptist, were born in a state of sanctifying grace.

Hence the Second Vatican Council declared that Our Lady is “above all others and in a singular way the generous associate and humble handmaid of the Lord. She conceived, brought forth and nourished Christ. She presented Him to the Father in the temple, and was united with Him by compassion as He died on the Cross. In this singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Saviour in giving back supernatural life to souls. Wherefore she is our mother in the order of grace.”

Thus, in accord with God’s Providential design, the house of Sts Joachim and Anne where Our Lady was born in Jerusalem is right next to the pool of Bethesda. It is here that Christ healed a man paralysed for 38 years. Now, by the Jewish Calendar, the year of Our Lady’s birth was 3748, that is to say almost 38 centuries from the creation of the world. 

Therefore, the paralysed man stands for all of humanity, paralysed by sin, and now, in the vicinity of where Mary was born, the Christ heals the paralytic to show that through the birth of Our Lady, the Lord God has worked a miracle greater even than that of creation itself, namely, the healing of Mankind of the illness of sin, and the elevation of his nature to the order of divine grace. 

Thus, today we “exult for joy in the Lord”, as the psalmist says, for through the birth of Our Blessed Mother, we too have the promise and hope of being born to eternal life.