September 8 – The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Feast)

Antiphons at Lauds - Psalms of Sunday of the 1st week

1. This is the day of the birth of the glorious Virgin Mary, daughter of Abraham, begotten from the tribe of Judah, and a beautiful branch from the stump of David.

2. The world has been filled with light on the day of the birth of the holy Virgin Mary, as she is the blessed Mother who, like a sacred root, has given us holy fruit.

3. Come let us celebrate with exceeding joy the birth of the holy Virgin Mary, that she may intercede for us before Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 11, 1-3

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

After Adam had eaten from the tree, the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." The Lord God said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate."

Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate."

The Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

This feast is the most ancient and solemn feast of the Cycle of Mary, originating in the sixth century, in which the Church invites all her children in the Catholic world to unite their joy and their gratitude with those of the angels who praise the Son of God because on that tlay His Mother, bodily and spiritually, entered heaven.

Admitted to the enjoyment of the delights of eternal contemplation, she chose at the feet of the Master the better part which shall not be taken away from her. The Mother of Christ is happy among all others because, better than all others, "she listened to the word of God." This word, the Word, the divine Wisdom which, under the Old Law, dwelt among the people of Israel, dwelt in Mary under the New Law. The Word became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin, and now amid the splendour of the heavenly Sion, the Word fills her with the delights of the beatific vision.

Christ, after having lain for only three days in the tomb, rose again and ascended to heaven. Likewise, the death of the Virgin resembled rather a short sleep,hence it was called the Dormitio, and before corruption could defile her body, God restored her to life and glorified her in heaven. These three privileges are celebrated by the feast of the Assumption which follows logically from the privilege of the Immaculate Conception and the Mystery of the Incarnation. For sin never having defiled the soul of Mary, it was right that her body, in which the Word had become Incarnate, should not be tainted by the corruption of the tomb.

"The immaculate body of Mary remained without corruption and was borne up to heaven, before the general resurrection."

The final triumph of the Assumption corresponds with the initial privilege of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. As the feast of the Conception of the Virgin affirmed in certain liturgies how appropriately God almighty had made Mary a creature apart from her very birth, so the feast of the Assumption each year proclaims the same appropriateness when she leaves this earth. The harmony which reigns in the works of God required an earlier resurrection of the Mother of God, who, holy among all and ever virgin, deserved on the part of her Son an adequate reward worthy of her position as Queen of heaven and mediatrix of all mankind.

The Church on earth, like Martha, has to care for the necessities of this present life, but she also like her, invokes the help of Mary.

A procession has always been a part of the feast of the Rest or Assumption of Mary. At Jerusalem it was formed by the numerous pilgrims praying at the tomb of the Virgin, thus contributing to the institution of the solemnity, the same as it was by the clergy of Constantinople.

At Rome it is the Basilica of St. Mary Major where the Station is held at Christmas to solemnize the mystery from which flowed all the glories of the Virgin, and it is also there that the Assumption was solemnized, in which these glories culminate. Mary received Jesus who came in the Nativity to this world and it is Jesus who receives Mary into heaven in the Assumption.

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