MARY, OUR MOTHER

There is church built over the traditional
location of the house of Mary, where in
Catholic tradition the Annunciation took place.

VATICAN - AVE MARIA - Happy Birthday Mother Mary!

In Mary's Nativity we are all born anew, Luciano Alimandi

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) -

The month of September is marked on the liturgical calendar by a special presence of the Blessed Virgin, beginning with the commemoration of her birth, on 8th September. It is a joy to think that as work is resumed, after a pause in the period of the Summer holidays, we believers finds on the horizon the luminous figure of Our Lady, as if to invite us to put new impulse into our activity.
We can say in fact that with the birth of Mary, everything is born anew since from Mary Jesus assumed human nature in order to save each one of us and be born to new life. The birth of the Mother is in a sense already the birth of the Son, it anticipates his coming with her immaculate nature, humility and total self giving to God, who chose her from all eternity with ineffable love.

The Church sees in Mary the Dawn who precedes the rising Sun, her Son Jesus. “Who is this arising like the dawn, fair as the moon, resplendent as the sun?” (Song of Songs 6, 10). To this verse of the Song of Songs the Christian knows the answer: she is Maria who arises like the dawn and shines with the light of Christ!

To celebrate the feast of the Nativity of Most Holy Mary means to meditate on the mystery of how her humility, as she affirms in the Magnificat, drew the attention of God who chose her as Mother; and this is why all generations call her blessed! The beatitude of Mary is founded on the choice made by God to whom Mary replied with profound and unequalled humility. The humility of the Creator encounter the humility of Mary who sought nothing except God's glory.

The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in his homily at the recent Agora for young people at Loreto, spoke of this “encounter of humility”, :“the Holy House of Nazareth” is “the shrine of humility: the humility of God who became flesh, became a little child and the humility of Mary who welcomed Him into her womb; the humility of the Creator and the humility of the creature. From this encounter of humility Jesus, Son of God and Son of man was born (…)the humble are seen as resigned and defeated people who have nothing to say to the world. Yet the truth is that humility is the best way, and not only because it is a great human virtue but also, and primarily, because it is God's own way of acting. This is the path chosen by Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant who ‘and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a cross’ (Phil 2,8)” (Homily Benedict XVI, Loreto 2 September 2007).

To walk along this the “master road” we need to be led by hand and guided by the One who walked it following her Son, through the “narrow gate”, from the beginning to the end, never wavering in our direction, not even for an instant. Mary walked it to the end with Jesus, because she was His handmaid to the end. “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord”, these words pronounced and the Annunciation were the expression of her whole being turned towards God, in total forgetfulness of self: an abyss of humility to enfold an abyss of Grace! Mary always wished to have the least important place, the place of “Yahwèh's poor ones”, and this is why God exalted her above all other creatures.

Her Immaculate Heart continues to diffuse in the Church all over the world, the life giving sap of that extraordinary humility so that the children of God, who are all children of Mary, may realise that they are nothing but creatures, little nothings in the universe of the infinite love of God. Little nothings called however to great things: to become in Christ everything of God! Truly it is worth losing ourselves - as the Holy Father reminds us continually - to receive the Everything of God! Like Mary, with Mary, through Mary!

(Agenzia Fides 5/9/2007, righe 45, parole 676)