RBWords

     Birthdays are important milestones because they can tell us a lot about a person.  But we don't know the actual date of Mary's birth.  September 8th was chosen for reasons that are lost in history!  What we can be sure of is that she was born!  The names of her parents, Joachim and Ann, come to us from an apocryphal source, The Protoevangelium of James.  There are legends and speculations, some of which are portrayed in the unusual stained glass windows of St. Ann Church in San Antonio, where I was pastor 1994-98.  From archaeological sources, we can put together what her life must have been like in a small village in Palestine in the first century.  For some reason I have not been able to understand, popular Catholic piety seems always to portray Mary as being somewhere in her late 20's or early 30's but rarely as a little girl or as an elderly woman!  There is a hint of this in the Gospel According to John 19:26-27, when Jesus entrusts his widowed mother to the Beloved Disciple.  She would have been elderly by the standards of life expectancy in those days.  In the front of the rectory at St. Ann's there is a statue of St. Ann showing her with Mary as a little girl.  All of this serves the valuable purpose of reminding us of Mary's humanity because Catholic piety has cloaked her with so many titles and devotions that this humanity can be forgotten!

     In faith we know that Mary was called "according to [God's] purpose and that things ultimately worked for good for her, but not without a lot of suffering, as the tradition of the Seven Dolors of Mary reminds us.  The celebration of her birthday can remind us that she was born, lived and died in a particular time.  She was a woman of faith who accepted an unusual and sacred role in salvation history.  Whatever titles and powers that subsequent Christian speculation and experience have conferred on Mary, ultimately it is her human solidarity with us that I find most comforting.  She is as near to me as the rosary in my pocket!  AMEN