The placing of the celebration is a small piece of liturgical craftsmanship. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is kept on September 8; the honoring of her name falls on September 12, in the same relation as the naming of a child to the child's birth. The name Mary, Miriam in Hebrew, was borne by the sister of Moses and was common in first-century Galilee; Christian writers have offered many interpretations of it, and the Church has never settled on one, so the day honors the person the name designates rather than an etymology. The celebration began in Spain in the late fifteenth century and was extended to the universal Church by Pope Innocent XI in 1683, in thanksgiving for the deliverance of Vienna from the siege of that year. Like the Holy Name of Jesus it was dropped from the general calendar in 1969 and restored as an optional memorial in the third edition of the Roman Missal in 2002, a pair of restorations that reflected the continued vitality of both devotions among the faithful. As an optional memorial in Ordinary Time it may be chosen freely; white vestments are used and the Missal provides its own collect, with readings taken from the common of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Reverence for Mary's name belongs to the wider devotion the Church expresses in the Hail Mary, in the Litany of Loreto, and in the many titles under which she is invoked, all of which, as the Second Vatican Council teaches in Lumen gentium, are directed to Christ and take nothing from the unique mediation of the one Redeemer.

Optional memorial

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Ordinary time

September 12

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