The birth of Mary

Today we celebrate the feast of the birthday of the Blessed Mother. She was conceived in St Anne’s womb on December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and to follow the duration of a human pregnancy, the church celebrates her birth date today, exactly 9 months later. Many countries, including Italy and Spain as well as Malta celebrate this holy day with images and statues of the baby Mary, although the statues venerated in Malta are that of a young girl, all of which known as Maria Bambina (the little child Mary.) In Malta we also commemorate the occasion of two major victories at war. The first one was the victory of the Maltese and the Knights of Malta against the Turks, the Ottoman Empire in 1565, and the second one was the end of Fascism and Nazism at the height of World War II, a time of terrible suffering for the Maltese people. The picture shows the statue that will be out in procession this evening in my new hometown of Naxxar, a procession that has been cancelled the past two years.