From The Sacramentary by Bl. Ildefonso Schuster:
As Eve, our first Mother, arose from the side of Adam, dazzling with life and innocence, so Mary came forth, bright and immaculate from the heart of the eternal Word, who, by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, as the Liturgy teaches us, was pleased to form that body and soul which were to be, one day, his Tabernacle and altar. This is the sublime meaning of the feast of the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the dawn foretelling the day which already breaks behind the eternal hills, the mystic rod which rises from the venerable root of Jesse; the stream which springs from Paradise; it is the symbolical fleece which is stretched on our dry earth to catch the miraculous dew. This is the new Eve, that is to say the life and the Mother of all the living, who is born to-day for those to whom the first Eve became the Mother of sin and death.
Today’s feast, the Nativity of Mary, is older than the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which was precisely nine months ago. I’ve always been puzzled that in the Vetus Ordo the Nativity of Mary is a feast of lesser weight (2nd class) than the Nativity of John the Baptist (1st class).
Stop for a moment. Consider what our eternal prospects were before the birth not only of Our Lord, but also before the birth of His Mother, from whom He took our human nature, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Ponder the state of slavery to sin in which we were bound and, after death, the strong possibility of everlasting separation from God.
Given what our prospects were, celebrating the birth of our fallen humanity’s solitary boast is a really good idea.
Holy Church, in celebrating liturgically her holy birth for a long time, ultimately reasoned back to Mary’s holy conception. As St. Thomas Aquinas argued,
“The Church celebrates the feast of our Lady’s Nativity. Now the Church does not celebrate feasts except of those who are holy. Therefore, even in her birth the Blessed Virgin was holy. Therefore, she was sanctified in the womb.” (STh III, q. 27, a. 1)
As we worship, so do we believe.
As we believe, so do we worship.
Change our worship you change belief, and vice versa.
We are our rites.
The ancient Roman observance of the Feast started around the time of Pope Honorius I (+638), though it was celebrated earlier in the Greek East. The station church for the feast was, of course, St. Mary Major and the Collect church was St. Adrian in the Roman Forum, which was originally the Curia or Senate House built by Julius Caesar. In the 13th c. 18 images of Mary from the different diaconal tituli (early parishes) were carried in procession. The Pope would change from shoes to slippers for the procession to St. Mary Major. He took off his slippers at the threshold of the basilica and as the Te Deum was sung his feet were washed with warm water before the Mass began.
As Blessed Ildefonso says:
Mary became Mother of the Divine Word Incarnate for the sake of sinful man. Will she not be to us also a loving Mother?
There are major differences in the rite of the Sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation) between the Vetus Ordo and the post-Conciliar Novus Ordo except in the essential form of the sacrament, the necessary words to impart the form of absolution. Those remain the same.
Today is the feast of St. Moses, lawgiver and prophet in the Old Testament.
