It should be a special day not just for Catholics but for Christians of all faiths.

For September 8 carries a quiet but extraordinary distinction: the day traditionally celebrated as the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary—the woman through whom Jesus Christ entered human history.

Weren’t we—all Christians—told by Jesus from the Cross, “This is your mother” (John 19:26-27)?

The Bible does not tell us the date of Mary’s birth. Some believe it’s August 5. Nor does Scripture name her parents, Joachim and Anne, whose names come from ancient Christian tradition.

Yet from the earliest centuries, Christians preserved a deep memory of Mary’s origins, and by the early Church era a feast honoring her Nativity had taken root in the East before spreading to Rome and throughout the Western Church.

So, why September 8?

The date falls exactly nine months after December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception—the celebration not of Christ’s conception, as is sometimes mistakenly thought, but of Mary’s conception in the womb of Saint Anne, preserved by a singular grace of God from original sin.

Thus the Church’s calendar itself tells a story. Nine months later: her birth.

Interesting also is how September 8 is one of only three birthdays celebrated liturgically by the Catholic Church: the Nativity of Jesus on December 25, the birth of Saint John the Baptist on June 24, and the Nativity of Mary.

That alone tells us something about her place in salvation history.

Mary’s birth was not accompanied, of course, by armies, palaces, trumpets, or worldly acclaim. It was almost certainly hidden, humble, unnoticed by the powers of the age. It could hardly be quieter! A tragedy it is, how since the division of Martin Luther, she has been obscure for a huge number of Christians.

Yet from that seemingly ordinary birth would come the young woman who would say, “Let it be done to me according to your word,” and through that assent the Eternal Word would take Flesh.

The ancient Church saw Mary’s birth as the first glimmer of dawn before sunrise. Christ was the Sun. Mary was the morning star announcing His approach.

For this reason the feast has traditionally carried a spirit of joy and comfort. Mary is comforting. Imagine what she experienced and saw: right onto Golgotha, the entire life of Our Savior. The long preparation for the Messiah was moving toward fulfillment.

The woman foretold in Genesis, the Virgin spoken of by Isaiah, the Mother who would stand beneath the Cross and later with the Apostles at Pentecost had entered the world, the holy woman whose first appearance in apparition occurred in the first century (to James at Zaragoza, Spain) and whose apparitions across Europe and then around the world led to the construction of shrines, chapels, churches, and cathedrals. She was truly Mother of the Church in ways most do not know.

There is also something tender about celebrating Mary’s birthday.

Catholics so often approach her with petitions, Rosaries, novenas, tears, and pleas for intercession. September 8 offers an augmentation of such prayers and something simpler: an opportunity simply to honor her, as children honor the birthday of a beloved mother.

And perhaps to say:

Happy birthday, Blessed Mother.

Thank you for saying yes.

Thank you for giving us Jesus.

[resources: The Last Secret]