Catholic Fire

“Your birth, O Blessed Virgin Mary, fills the whole world with a sweet consolation and a holy joy, because of you was born our Jesus, our God, who has taken away from us the curse in which we were plunged by the sin of our first parents, and filled us with all kinds of blessings.”  ~ St. John Vianney History of this feast day The feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the oldest of the Marian solemnities, was mentioned by the Church Fathers in the early fifth century.  Like other Marian feasts, it began to be celebrated at the local level without any major solemnity. As the feast began to spread throughout the Byzantine world in the sixth and seventh century, it was celebrated with greater solemnity. The solemnity of the feast spread to Rome in the seventh century, and in the following centuries, it spread throughout the whole Western Church. In the eighth century, at the time of St Andrew of Crete (+740), the feast of Mary’s nativity was already obse...

“Your birth, O Blessed Virgin Mary, fills the whole world with a sweet consolation and a holy joy, because of you was born our Jesus, our God, who has taken away from us the curse in which we were plunged by the sin of our first parents, and filled us with all kinds of blessings.”  ~ St. John Vianney History of this feast day The feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the oldest of the Marian solemnities, was mentioned by the Church Fathers in the early fifth century.  Like other Marian feasts, it began to be celebrated at the local level without any major solemnity. As the feast began to spread throughout the Byzantine world in the sixth and seventh century, it was celebrated with greater solemnity. The solemnity of the feast spread to Rome in the seventh century, and in the following centuries, it spread throughout the whole Western Church. In the eighth century, at the time of St Andrew of Crete (+740), the feast of Mary’s nativity was already ob...