The birth of every human being holds a promise that brings the world hope. When love is shared between two people, this love is united with God’s creative work. The parents’ loving union shows a world filled with struggle and woes renewed hope. The life of a new child has the power to spread God’s love and peace throughout the earth. 

In Mary, everything of this is magnificently true. If Jesus is the perfect expression of God’s love, Mary is its precursor. If Jesus is the fullness of salvation, Mary is its emergence. 

This is all true in a glorious way in Mary. If Jesus is the perfect expression of God’s love, Mary is the foreshadowing of that love. If Jesus has brought the fullness of salvation, Mary is its dawning. 

Birthday festivities offer joy to the celebrant as well as to family and friends. Mary’s birth, along with the birth of Jesus, brings the greatest joy to the world. Every time we commemorate her birth, we can surely aspire for a rise in peace in our hearts and the world at large. 

Saint Augustine ties the birth of the Virgin Mary to the saving work of her Son, Jesus. He asks the world to rejoice and gleam brilliantly in the light of her birth. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley. Through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” The opening prayer at Mass refers to the birth of Jesus, Mary’s Son, as the time our salvation began, and offers an increase of peace. 

(Source: Franciscan Media – https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/nativity-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary/)