The birth of Mary


 

Scripture says nothing about the birth (or Nativity) of the Virgin Mary. What we do know, we know either from the authentic Tradition of theChurchor from apocryphal texts.

 

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The silence of Scripture

Scripture says nothing about the birth of the Virgin Mary. It is the apocryphal accounts that recount the event, including the Protevangel of James, dating from the 2nd century.

The Fulfilment of Time

And yet, as the Fathers of the Church, the saints and the mystics who follow Marian theology have said, Mary's birth was an occasion for immeasurable rejoicing in the Trinity and among the myriad angels of Heaven. Indeed, with the birth of Mary, the whole of Creation, visible and invisible, reached the hour foretold by the prophets, the hour of the "Fulfilment of the Times", the hour when the Messiah would be born of a Virgin from the chosen people...

The apocryphal stories

Everything to do with the childhood of the Virgin Mary comes from non-canonical texts, known as apocrypha, such as the Protevangel of James or theGospel of the Nativity of Saint Mary, which date from the first centuries of the Christian era and were reprinted in the thirteenthcentury in the Golden Legend by the Dominican friar Jacques de Voragine, and widely distributed.

 

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To know more

 

-on the apocryphal account of Mary's birthin the Marian Encyclopaedia

-on the birth of Mary in artin the Marian Encyclopaedia

-on the Nativity of Mary in the liturgies of the worldin the Marian Encyclopaedia

-on the birth of Mary reported by Blessed A.-C. Emmerichin the Marian Encyclopaedia

 

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