Come and join us tomorrow, Sunday 8 September, to celebrate our Parish Mass at 10.30 a.m. It is also the lesser feast of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. There is no biblical reference to this event other than in the Protoevangelium (this means literally 'first good news') of James and the Gospel of Thomas (from the Apocryphal New Testament) and much of these texts is regarded as highly dubious, which is why they were not included in the New Testament Canon. What is for sure is that Our Lady was most definitely born, and if she had not been born, human history would have been very different!

The readings for tomorrow are not unrelated, since they look at the opening of the ears of the deaf, the eyes of the blind and the movement of those who were lame, as well as the conversion of desert into pools of water (Isaiah 35). These are the work of God. Jesus' miracles in Mark 7, giving healing, even at a distance, to a child with an unclean spirit, and hearing and speech to a deaf man are the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy as he is the Son of God. Without Mary's birth, that extraordinary connection could not have happened.