The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin: August 15th

On August 15th, Christians around the world celebrate the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord. It’s a beautiful time to pause to honor the remarkable life of the woman God chose to bear His Son into the world. It is a feast day filled with reverence, gratitude, and deep reflection on the extraordinary role Mary played in the story of our salvation.

The Life of St. Mary the Virgin

Of all the women in all of human history, God chose Mary. He chose her to be the vessel through which His eternal Son would take on human flesh and enter the world as one of us. Her obedience, her faith, and her wholehearted surrender to God’s purposes were not incidental to the story of our redemption - they were woven into its very fabric.

God’s Plan for Mary

To fully appreciate Mary’s role in the story of salvation, we have to go back to the very beginning, to the moment when everything went wrong and God’s response to that brokenness contained, hidden within it, the first whisper of hope.

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve disobey God and eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God does not destroy them but issues a series of consequences for their sin and speaks a curse over the serpent who tempted them. And then, in Genesis 3:15, something extraordinary is embedded in that curse - a prophecy that Christians have recognized from the earliest centuries of the Church as the first proclamation of the Gospel:

“And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,and between your offspring and her offspring.He will strike your head,and you will strike his heel.”

This prophecy is known as the Protoevangelium, a Latin word meaning “first gospel” or “first good news.” It is understood to be a prophetic announcement of the coming Messiah and His ultimate victory over sin and death. Mary is the woman. Her offspring is Jesus. Satan will temporarily strike at Christ’s heel through the crucifixion, but Christ’s death and resurrection will crush the serpent’s head forever.

From the very moment sin entered the world, God was already at work preparing the way for Mary and the Son she would bear.

Mary’s Fiat

When the fullness of time had come (Galatians 4:4), God sent the angel Gabriel to a young girl in Nazareth named Mary (Luke 1:26). She listened in wonder as Gabriel told her that she would conceive a son by the Holy Spirit, that He would be called the Son of the Most High, and that His kingdom would have no end.

Mary’s response has echoed through the centuries as one of the most beautiful and courageous acts of faith in all of Scripture:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be unto me according to your word.”— Luke 1:38

This response is known as Mary’s Fiat from the Latin word meaning “let it be” or “so be it.” It was a profound act of faith, obedience, and surrender to God’s will, spoken by a young woman who could not have fully understood what she was saying yes to and said yes anyway. Her willingness stands in deliberate contrast to Eve’s disobedience in the Garden, making Mary’s fiat one of the pivotal moments in the entire history of salvation.

This event, the Annunciation, is also the moment of the Incarnation, when the eternal Word of God took on human flesh in Mary’s womb. At this moment, Mary became what the Church has called since the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD the Theotokos, a Greek word meaning God-bearer, often translated as Mother of God. The title is not primarily about Mary but about Jesus. By calling Mary the Theotokos, the Church affirms that the child she carried was not merely a holy man or a great prophet but God Himself, fully divine from the moment of His conception.

Shortly after the Annunciation, Mary travels to visit her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who is also miraculously pregnant. The moment Mary arrives and speaks, Elizabeth and her unborn child are filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth cries out:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Mary responds with the Magnificat, one of the most beautiful songs of praise in all of Scripture, a hymn of gratitude and joy that has been sung by the Church in evening prayer for centuries (Luke 1:46-55).

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me,and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear himfrom generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Mary and Jesus

Months later, Mary travels with Joseph to Bethlehem for the census, gives birth to Jesus in a stable, and watches as shepherds arrive that night with astonishing stories of angels and heavenly proclamations. Luke tells us simply that Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

That phrase captures something essential about who Mary was. She did not always understand. She was not always given explanations. She held the mystery, turned it over, and kept faith through what she could not yet see.

The Gospel accounts give us a series of remarkable moments in Mary’s life alongside Jesus - meeting Simeon and Anna in the Temple, receiving the Wise Men from the East, fleeing to Egypt with the Holy Family, finding the twelve-year-old Jesus among the teachers of the law, witnessing His first miracle at the wedding in Cana, and standing at the foot of the cross as He died. Each of these moments reveals something of Mary’s faith, her willingness to follow, to trust, to remain present even when presence cost her everything.

After the resurrection and ascension, Mary is found in the upper room with the disciples, praying and waiting for the promised Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). She was there at the birth of the Church just as she had been there at the birth of her Son.

The Faith of Mary

Mary’s appearances in Scripture are relatively few but deeply significant. Again and again she is portrayed as a woman of faith, obedience, and humility, deeply connected to her Son’s mission and to the broader movement of God’s compassion and justice in the world. Her life bridges the Old and New Testaments. She embodies the ideal response to God’s call. And her unique role as Theotokos establishes one of the most important theological foundations of the Christian faith - that in Jesus Christ, God truly became one of us.

Lesser Feasts and Fasts expresses something of her significance beautifully:

“What we can believe is that one who stood in so intimate a relationship with the incarnate Son of God on earth must, of all the human race, have the place of highest honor in the eternal life of God. A paraphrase of an ancient Greek hymn expresses this belief in very familiar words: ‘O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises, alleluia.’”

Mary’s Remaining Days

According to tradition, Mary spent her remaining years in the care of the Apostle John, as Jesus had asked from the cross (John 19:26-27). The early Christian writer Hippolytus of Rome records that John took Mary to Ephesus, in what is now modern Turkey, where she lived until her death. Tradition tells us that she spent those years in prayer and in service to the early Christian community, a mother to the Church as she had been a mother to its Lord.

How to Celebrate the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin offers some of the most beautiful and accessible traditions for celebrating at home. Here are a few ideas for honoring August 15th with your family:

Read Luke 1:26-38 and recite the Magnificat together. The Annunciation and the Magnificat together tell the essential story of Mary’s faith. Reading them aloud as a family on her feast day is the simplest and most meaningful way to mark the occasion.

Display or eat something with rosemary. An old legend says that the blossoms of the rosemary plant were originally white until Mary stopped to do laundry during the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt and threw her blue cloak over a rosemary bush to dry. From that day, the story goes, the flowers turned blue. Whether legend or not, rosemary has been associated with Mary for centuries and a sprig or small bouquet on the table is a lovely and fragrant way to honor her feast.

Display marigolds. The name marigold is itself a tribute to Mary, combining “Mary” and “gold.” The golden color of the marigold has traditionally symbolized her virtues of purity, love, humility, and obedience. A bouquet of marigolds on the dining table is both beautiful and deeply connected to the tradition of her feast day.

Use something blue. Blue is the color most associated with Mary throughout Christian art and tradition, symbolizing purity, humility, and fidelity. Lay a blue tablecloth on the table, use blue dishes, or make something with blueberries - a blueberry lemon tart is a beautiful and delicious option for the feast day table.

the recipe -

Blueberry Lemon Tart

Pastry:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 2 tablespoons sugar

• Pinch kosher salt

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, in chunks

• 1 large egg, separated

• 2 tablespoons ice water, plus 1 teaspoon

  
  

Filling:

• 4 large eggs

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 cup fresh lemon juice (about 5 lemons)

• 1/4 cup heavy cream

• 1 lemon, zested

• Pinch kosher salt

• 1 pint blueberries

  
  

To make the pastry, pulse the flour, sugar, and salt together in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the dough resembles cornmeal. Add the egg yolk and two tablespoons of ice water and pulse again until the dough pulls together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle. Roll the dough onto the pin and lay it inside a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough into the edges of the pan and fold the excess dough inside to reinforce the rim. Cover the tart pan with plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator for another 30 minutes to rest.

To bake the shell, heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and prick the bottom of the dough with a fork. Cover the shell with a piece of parchment paper and fill it with pie weights or dry beans. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the parchment and weights. Lightly beat the egg white with one teaspoon of water and brush it onto the bottom and sides of the tart shell; set aside to cool.

Whisk the eggs, sugar, lemon juice, cream, zest, and salt together. Add the blueberries to the cooled tart shell and pour the filling over the blueberries. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. The curd should jiggle slightly when done. Cool to room temperature, remove from the tart ring, and serve.

Recipe from The Food Network.