A feast of the Mother of God

The Nativity of the Theotokos

The Church keeps the birth of the Virgin Mary to the righteous Joachim and Anna. Childless into old age, they never grumbled but prayed, and an angel announced to each of them that a daughter would be born through whom salvation would come to the whole world.

The dates

Kept on: 8 September (21 September on the Old Calendar)
Next, New Calendar: 8 September 2027
Next, Old Calendar: 21 September 2027

The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.

How the day is kept

It is the first great feast of the Church year, which begins a week earlier.

The next day the Church remembers her parents, Joachim and Anna, and childless couples pray to them for a child.

On the same day the Church also remembers wonderworking icons of the Mother of God, among them the Kursk-Root icon of the Sign and the icon of Pochaev.