The Blessed Virgin Mary
- Also kept
- Mary, Mother of God (1 January), the Annunciation (25 March), her Nativity (8 September), the Immaculate Conception (8 December)
- Lived
- 1st century BC – 1st century AD
- Patron of
- the whole Church
Almost everything we know of Mary’s life comes from the Gospels. She was a young woman of Nazareth in Galilee, betrothed to a carpenter named Joseph, when the angel Gabriel greeted her: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Told that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of the Most High, she answered, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1).
She hurried to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and sang the Magnificat. She gave birth to Jesus at Bethlehem, fled with him and Joseph into Egypt, and searched for him for three days when he stayed behind in the Temple. At the wedding at Cana she told the servants, “Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye” (John 2). She stood at the foot of the cross, where her dying Son gave her to the beloved disciple as his mother (John 19), and she prayed with the Apostles as they waited for the Holy Spirit (Acts 1).
The Church has reflected on her for two thousand years. The Council of Ephesus (431) proclaimed her Theotokos, Mother of God, because the child she bore is God. The Church teaches that she remained a virgin always. Pius IX defined in 1854 that she was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception. Pius XII defined in 1950 that at the end of her earthly life she was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, which the Church celebrates on the feast of the Assumption, 15 August.