Today, nine months after the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we celebrate her birthday on September 8. Today is the birthday of our spiritual mother.  God does not need to use many words to make some of the most important things happen: God said, “Let there be light” and the entire universe sprang into existence. God said, “This is my body.” And bread was transformed into God in the Eucharist at the Last Supper. From the Cross in God said, “Behold, your mother.” What God says become real, and from that moment Mary became our spiritual mother. I know Mary is my Spiritual Mother because I’ve met her  In October of 1991 a seminarian, who is now Fr. Bill Ashbaugh,  invited me to watch a movie with him. He didn’t tell me what we were going to watch, and little did I know that he had planned for us to watch a video entitled Marian Apparitions of the 20th Century. The movie was narrated by Ricardo Montalban, famous for his endorsement for the Chrysler Cordoba with the rich Corinthian leather.  The film documents the apparitions of Mary in the 19th and 20th centuries. At one point as we were watching the video, the room completely dissolved, and it was just me and the Mother of God. To be clear, this was not an apparition. It was more like an intellectual vision. But she was there, and her presence was undeniable. She said to me, “Michael, I have waited too long. You must change now.”  For many years right up to that night I had been living in grave, habitual if not mortal sin. Our Lady must have flooded my soul with some unusual grace because when I walked out of that apartment everything changed. I stopped immediately all the grave sins I had made into deep habits and from the next day forward I began to pray the Rosary every day, attend daily Mass and I began to fast on bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays. I could not have done this on my own and certainly not overnight. This was a special grace from the Mother of God. If the Mother of God is real, then Jesus is real, and then everything must change. Mary, Our Spiritual Mother continues to come to her children on earth to care for them In 1531 Mary appears in Mexico City, leaving a supernatural, permanent, virtually indestructible sign, the cloak of Juan Diego with her image on it, and 10,000 Aztec Indians Convert to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. You can still see the cloak with her image today with your own eyes for the price of a short flight.  1858 Mary appears at Lourdes France, commands Bernadette to scratch in the ground, and out flows a spring of water that has given forth more than 33,000 gallons of water every day since. At the request of Our Lady people began to bathe in the waters and what occurred was more than 7000 medically verifiable miraculous cures. So many miraculous cures that they built a rail line just to bring the sick to their Mother Mary at Lourdes.  In 1917 in Fatima Portugal Mary promised a public miracle for all to see. On October 13, 1917, she delivered on her promise with the miracle of the sun witnessed by more than 70,000 people and reported on by every public newspaper the next day.  In the 1980’s Mary appeared at Kibeho Rawanda, warning the people of the growing hatred and that they most forgive their neighbors from the heart. She warned them of a river of blood. They did not listen to their Mother and 1,000,000 Rawandans were killed by their friends and neighbors. Mary has been appearing to six people in Medjugorje Bosnia Herzogovina begging the world to turn away from sin and self-destruction and back to God before it is too late. Will we heed the call of our Mother this time?  There is a superabundant power added to the Motherhood of Mary and that is the Holy Spirit. The mission of the Holy Spirit in the world is to conceive the life of Jesus in you, and then form Christ within you, and watch over, protect, educate and nurture the life of Christ in us. God formed Mary as the perfect human expression of the maternal mission.