"Let us celebrate with joy the Birth of the Virgin Mary: from Her arose the Sun of justice, Christ our God.
The invitation to joy in the liturgical texts is constant since the ancient beginnings of this feast. It is logical that it should be so: if family, friends, and neighbors rejoice when a child is born, and if birthdays are celebrated with jubilation, how could we not be filled with joy at the commemoration of the birth of our Mother? This happy event indicates to us that the Messiah is already near: Mary is the Morning Star that, in the dawn preceding the sunrise, announces the arrival of the Savior, the Sun of justice in the history of humankind. 'It was fitting,' notes an ancient sacred writer, 'that this brilliant and surprising coming of God to humanity be preceded by some event that would prepare us to receive with joy the great gift of salvation. And this is the meaning of the feast we celebrate today, for the Birth of the Mother of God is the prelude to this whole treasure of blessings (...). Let all creation, then, overflow with happiness and contribute in its own way to the joy of this day. May heaven and earth unite in this celebration, and may everything in the world and above the world celebrate it with joy.'
Today's Mass Liturgy applies to the newborn Virgin the passage from the Letter to the Romans in which Saint Paul describes divine mercy, which chooses men for an eternal destiny: Mary, from all eternity, is predestined by the Most Holy Trinity to be the Mother of Her Son. For this purpose, she was adorned with all graces: 'The soul of Mary was the most beautiful that God created, so much so that, after the Incarnation of the Word, this was the greatest and most worthy work that the Almighty carried out in this world.' The grace of Mary at the moment of her conception surpassed the graces of all the saints and angels combined, for God gives to each person the grace corresponding to their mission in the world. The immense grace of Mary was sufficient and proportionate to the singular dignity to which God had called her from eternity. Mary was so great in holiness and beauty, Saint Bernard expounds, that it was not fitting for God to have any other Mother, nor was it fitting for Mary to have any other Son than God. And Saint Bonaventure affirms that God can create a greater world, but He cannot make a more perfect mother than the Mother of God.
Let us also remember today that we have received a call from God to holiness, to fulfill a specific mission in the world. In addition to the joy that contemplating the fullness of grace and beauty of Our Lady always brings us, we must also reflect that God gives each of us the necessary and sufficient graces, without missing a single one, to carry out our specific vocation in the midst of the world. Today we can also consider how logical it is that we wish to celebrate the anniversary of our own birth—our birthday—because God specifically willed for us to be born, and because He called us to an eternal destiny of happiness and love.
HCD"