The church celebrates today the birth of the Blessed Mother. To affirm the duration of human pregnancy the church celebrates Mary’s Immaculate Conception exactly 9 months prior to this feast, on December 8. Her birth was promised by an angel to her parents St. Joachim and St. Anne who were shunned by many neighbors as they were childless, and this was considered as a dishonor by many. But I like to remember Mary as a toddler, a young child, a teenager, who must have been a regular teenager with the peer pressure issues that all young people face today. We always imagine Mary with folded hands, a sweet smile, an obedient disposition and other attributes we imagine when we look at statues and paintings. But just as boys will be boys, girls will be girls also, and she was probably similar to our young girls and teenagers, with the exception of not having a cell-phone attached to her ears. We honor Mary today and ask her protection over our young people, as so many of them have drifted away from the church. May she keep our families close to her heart, and bring peace in our troubled world.
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