Cum Iucunditate [With Joy]

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
08 September, 2014

"WITH JOY let us celebrate the nativity of blessed Mary, so that she may intercede for us with the Lord Jesus Christ” rings out one of the antiphons for First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) on the eve of this great feast; and it is under the pervading theme of joy that we commemorate the great intercessory role of the Blessed Virgin in the history of our salvation.

Mary’s birth intercedes between the old and the new covenants, like that moment of first light before the sun rises above the horizon, with a glow that brings the promise of a new dawn. The nativity of Mary creates the bond that will unite God to his people; for through her birth, by God’s grace untouched by original sin, she becomes the pure vessel through which the Word will be made flesh; and by means of her heredity her son will be the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that in his seed will be sent the Messiah, the deliverer of His people, Israel.

So it is with great joy that we can appreciate the great saving plan of God to fulfil His covenant with His chosen people in the incarnation of "Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” [Mt.1:1]; the Son of God sent in fulfilment of the law and the prophets and to institute in His blood a new covenant for the salvation of not just of Israel but all mankind. 

We find that as with every Marian feast, the celebration today of the Nativity of Mary points us towards her son, and in particular the Christological significance of the Saviour’s earthly lineage, from which the immense joy of the day is derived. And the theme of joy is propagated across every part of the Church’s public worship today, from the Divine Office to the Word of God in the Mass of the day. 

The prophet Micah proclaims the joyful future of God’s people with the coming of a ruler who “shall stand firm and shepherd his flock” in to an era of justice and peace. In his prophecy, Mary stands at the threshold of this time of deliverance as the instrument through which God will forever change the fate of his children, from a people forsaken, to a family united in covenant with God.

The Psalm echoes Mary’s own song of joy at the gift of the incarnation that she was chosen to bring forth. Her joy becomes our own with the refrain from Isaiah 61:10, “With delight I rejoice in the Lord” as the Psalmist recalls the goodness of God who has been our salvation.

The apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans, whilst not speaking directly of the Virgin, recalls the joyful destiny of all who are chosen and called by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son” and so justified and glorified in Him. The same is true for Mary, the first of all believers in Christ Jesus, who was foreknown by God even from her conception and birth as intimately united with Him in the Divine plan for which she had been predestined by the grace of God to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the Mother of God’s Son.

The Gospel sets before us the whole history of salvation into which the Christ child will be born, descended from Abraham and born of a virgin that he may be Emmanuel, God with us. And as a precursor to the joy of Christmas, we celebrate today one of only two other births that the Church has elevated to a solemn feast: the Nativity of Mary – the other being the Nativity of John the Baptist. And just as many “will rejoice” at the birth of John, the precursor of Christ (Luke 1:14), how much greater is the joy that is roused by the birth of the Mother of the Saviour?