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Our Lady's Birthday

Has it ever struck you as odd that the gospel of the day is the genealogy of Christ? What does that tell us about Mary, whose birthday we celebrate? Why did the compilers of the lectionary not choose one of those passages which give us a glimpse of Mary's personality, the Wedding Feast at Cana for instance, or the Finding of the Child Jesus? Instead we have this rather dry and obviously stylized account of Jesus' ancestry, into which Mary is inserted almost as an after-thought as the wife of Joseph and mother of the Christ. Could that be precisely the point? St Bernard calls Mary the aquaduct who channels the Fountain of Life to us: no matter how glorious the aquaduct, it is the Water that we must focus on. Todays feast reminds us powerfully that we hold Mary in high honour because she is the Mother of God. The liturgy underlines both this great dignity of Mary and her sharing in our common humanity. Looked at in that light, what possible gospel could we have but the genealogy of our Saviour?