Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
September 8, 2021
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
My husband and I got married on my Auntie Mary’s birthday. When we picked the date, we carefully examined the Notre Dame football schedule but failed to schedule around our loved ones’ birthdays. Luckily for us, my Auntie Mary made no fuss. She was one of the 30 people who joyfully celebrated our sacramental union during the depths of the pandemic. Furthermore, she never complained when my husband and I decided to “get married again” on our first anniversary and celebrate with the friends and family who could not attend the first time. On her birthday, Auntie Mary wanted none of the spotlight. Instead, she gave it away.
Today we celebrate the birthday of a different Mary who also gives away all the attention: Our Lady, Notre Dame. In taking this day to commemorate the Blessed Mother’s birth, we acknowledge that she is a main character in the salvation story. Without Our Lady and her tremendous faith, the coming of Emmanuel, God with us, would not have happened as it did.
Mary offered her entire life in the service of God. She nurtured the light of her faith, and she gave that light away. In giving her fiat, Mary changed the world. She said “no” to her own plans and “yes” to God’s. She humbly and courageously became what some might consider to be the world’s first Christian.
Just as God called Mary to bear Christ into the world, so too God calls us to echo her fiat. We are called to bear Christ into the world as humbly and courageously as Our Lady did. In all things, let us ask for the Blessed Mother’s intercession so that, through it, we might learn to set ourselves aside and make space in the spotlight for Jesus Christ, Emmanuel.
Our Lady, Notre Dame, pray for us!
Prayer
Loving Father, you entrusted to Saint Joseph your only Son and his mother, our mother, Mary. Joseph protected them from harm and taught Jesus how to work for a living so that he could provide for his mother. Grant that we too may know his protection and be strengthened by his courage and perseverance, so that we might embrace the daily tasks in front of us more fully. We ask this through your Son, our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Today, we remember the birth date of the one honored as the “God-bearer.”
Mary’s birth was the first realization of the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ. She was born without sin, pure and holy—“full of grace”—to prepare her to bear God’s Son to the world.
Among the saints, only Mary and St. John the Baptist have commemorations on the dates of their births and their deaths (or assumption to heaven, in Mary’s case). These two, above all other saints, heralded and participated in the arrival of our savior.
The birthplace of Mary is not known for certain. One ancient tradition holds that she was born in Nazareth. Another tradition states that she was born in Jerusalem in a neighborhood near the pool of Bethesda. Today there is a church in that neighborhood dedicated to St. Anne, Mary’s mother, and a crypt under that church designates a spot where Mary is believed to have been born. View images from that church in this part of our virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
In the account of the first sin in Genesis, Eve was led astray by the figure of the serpent. Immediately upon discovering their sin, God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen 3:15).
Because the offspring of the woman lethally strikes at the serpent’s head, this passage is allegorically understood as the final triumph of good over evil. Here is the first promise of a redeemer for fallen humanity, Jesus, and the passage notes he is born of woman, Mary. With her obedience, Mary reverses Eve’s disobedience and brings life to the world through her Son, Jesus.
When Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., arrived at a missionary outpost on the American frontier in northern Indiana in November of 1842, he saw a frozen lake covered in snow. The purity of the scene reminded him of Mary, and he named the university he founded after Our Lady of the Lake: the University of Notre Dame du Lac.
Images of Mary abound on campus, including a depiction of her birth in the mural shown above from the Basilica. Of course, she also appears atop the golden-domed Main Building, where she stands 19 feet high and weighs 4,000 pounds. Relics of Mary, including pieces of her clothes and hair, rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.
Mary, Our Lady of the Lake, your obedience reversed Eve’s disobedience and brought life to the world—pray for us!