Earlier this month was the official birthday of the Blessed Virgin.

For years, many have wondered if it’s accurate. At Medjugorje, one of the six seers or two locutionists (who later received “messages” but have been out of view for decades now) claimed to have been told the actual birthday is August 5.

Which is it? Is it crucial? How can we know, short of arriving (pray God) in Heaven one day?

Still, it’s intriguing: August 5 is also the anniversary of the snow miracle in Rome in 352 A.D. at the spot where the great Saint Mary Major Basilica, a favorite for Popes, now stands because Mary appeared to Pope Liberius requesting the church there.

Notes a Catholic news site, “Saint Mary Major is widely believed to be the most important church dedicated to Mary in Western Christendom. Under the papal altar rest five pieces of sycamore from the manger in Bethlehem, along with the cloths in which tradition holds Jesus’ small body was wrapped. This has earned the basilica another name, Saint Mary of the Crib. One of the most amazing aspects of this church is the miracle that took place in the fourth century.”

But back to her birthday.

And here we come to Saint Maurille, a disciple of Saint Martin.

Originally from Italy, he became a monk at Marmoutier. He founded a monastery near Chalonnes in Anjou and in 423 he became bishop of Angers.

According to a very old oral tradition, the first written records of this story are found in the chronicles of the monks of Saint-Florent and Saumur.

The Virgin appeared to him in 430. Saint Maurille had come to visit the monastery of Mont Glonne on the shores of the Loire between Nantes and Angers.

At the foot of a hill where he had retired to pray in solitude, he suddenly saw himself surrounded by a celestial light. It was the Blessed Virgin Mary holding in her arms her Divine Child who deigned to appear to him in a “alder” or a poplar tree.

She told her devoted servants that it was the will of God and the good pleasure of her Divine Son that he should establish in his diocese a solemn feast of the day of her Holy Birth on the 8th of September.

And so it is, on that day, celebrated.