The Feast of Marymas, September 8th
The Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is one of the two ‘holy births’ that are celebrated in the Christian liturgical calendar outside of the birth of Christ Himself (Saint John the Baptist being the other ‘holy birth'). Marymas, or the day that marks the nativity of Mary, has been celebrated liturgically since at least the sixth century, most likely developing in Syria or Palestine around the time of the Council of Ephesus, when Marion devotion was beginning to solidify and intensify. By the seventh century, the Byzantines had solidified the feast in the Eastern calendar, and while our only details of Mary’s birth comes from apocryphal texts like the Gospel of James and the private revelations of people like Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, the point stands that Mary, as the mother of Jesus, is the second most important person in the Gospel narrative, and her birth is something to commemorate. After all, as Saint Andrew of Crete said, "the birth of Mary is a joyful prelude to the gift of humanity's salvation". The nativity serves a dawn of hope: Mary’s birth signals that God’s promises are beginning to be fulfilled, and that salvation and otherworldly hope is coming, and coming soon. She is the dawn that precedes the sunrise of Christ’s coming into the world.
According to apocryphal texts, Mary was born to Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, a childless Jewish couple who held a significant role in their community, though the Gospel of James, Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich, and other sources throughout the centuries have contradicting accounts of what that role was. Mary’s parents prayed desperately to God for children; Joachim, ashamed at having ‘failed’ to support his wife by providing her a child by the time he was old and bent, removed himself from society, choosing instead to commit penance in the wilderness. He fasted for weeks on end, promising Anne he would neither eat nor drink until God looked favorably on them, in hopes his devotion would soften his Lord’s heart.
While Joachim threw himself into prayer, Anne lamented. She wept bitterly; being without a child was unbearable enough, but now that Joachim had vanished she could soon be a widow as well. Still, she kept her heart open to God, believing that somehow, good could still come from this-- after all, God had blessed the womb of Sarah! There was still a chance for her and her husband. Anne promised that, should a child be born to her, she and Joachim would raise them to adore and fear the Lord, and that they would gift the child to Him and His service. And then, while mourning under a laurel tree, an angel suddenly appeared:
"Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world."
Just as the angel said, Joachim returned to Anne, and Anne finally conceived. She carried the baby to term and, with Mary's birth, the beginning of the end arrived for death. The coming of the Word grew just a bit closer with each of Mary's red-faced, infant cries. As Anne nursed her child, the Son of Man came one step closer to incarnation.
Joachim brings Mary to the temple, and she is loved from the moment she is seen. It is decided not long after that, given the gift of her birth, so similar to Abraham and Sarah’s, the bodies of an old man and a barren old woman producing such a beautiful baby, and Anne's promise that her child would forever serve the Lord, Mary should be offered to God and serve in the temple until her first menstrual cycle. She would then be unable to work in the same holy places as her males peers, but when that time eventually came, the community vowed they would raise her together, and that she could still dedicate herself to a life of glorifying God. She would forever magnify His greatness.
Saint Augustine spoke of Mary's birth as the prelude of Salvation-- “she is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley." While her nativity and infancy narrative are not biblical, her importance in Jesus' life cannot be understated, and even if one chooses not to believe the story of Marymas (as they have every right to do!), I think Mary still deserves a humble little 'happy birthday' after it all.
