Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ to the Brodger Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas.

Today we celebrate the nativity of the Theotocos, the birth of the mother of God. the

the nativity of the Theotocos, the birth of the mother of God, and I believe this is celebrated in the West today as well.

And I have just a couple of very simple thoughts that I wanted to share about the

feast as I was praying about it this morning. One is from part of our prayers for the feast today and then

one is a little bit of a reflection on the feast that we have tomorrow.

So today at Matins, at morning prayer, we have this prayer.

At your nativity today, O Undefiled Maiden, Eve is loosed from her condemnation.

Adam is also freed from the ancient curse and he sings,

Through you we have been delivered from corruption.

Eve is loose from her condemnation.

Adam is also freed from the ancient curse. So as a note, there's some artistic

license I guess that the church takes here in our hymnography of kind of the flow of things

right is the church is not saying that specifically it's because of the birth of Mary that

Adam and Eve are freed or that the rest of us are freed. The church very much teaches that all of this comes

through the redemption that Christ brings, but the point here right is that

in Mary's birth this will lead to all of the other things as in Mary

conceiving by the Holy Spirit and then giving birth to Jesus and then raising Jesus and then Jesus's death and

resurrection and all of that. So the church is not saying that Mary is our

Savior or anything like that. I want to be very very clear.

But or anything like that, I want to be very, very clear. But the simple thought that I had about this prayer

is that Mary came as an answer to the prayers of Joachim and Anna, which I'll talk about in the second part of this. But the birth of Mary was not only a gift to Joachim and Anna.

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