Today as we celebrate the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Matthew (1: 18-23) which tells the story of how Jesus came to be born. Fr Paul says the Church celebrates the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, which nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anne. The circumstances of the Virgin Mary’s infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church. On Our Lady’s Birthday Fr Paul invites us to pray ‘Mary our Mother…pray for us!’