Today, we celebrate the presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, which does not have a direct reference in the Gospels or in any other book of Sacred Scripture. Our feast today has its foundation in a belief passed down in the traditions of the Early Church and in other first century sacred writings. Tradition teaches that Mary was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem when she was a girl. Mary must have spent a great deal of time in the Temple practicing her faith and preparing for her eventual role as the mother of our Lord and the mother of the Church. We can use our imagination and our understanding of Mary from Scripture and from tradition to reflect upon what her childhood and her journey of faith might have been like before her visit from the Archangel Gabriel. We can also ask ourselves how we can turn to Mary and ask her to help prepare us for our mission as Christians in our modern world, a task that becomes more and more difficult as our modern secular society becomes a place that is hostile to the values of the Gospel.
In the Gospel today, we witness Jesus weeping for the city of Jerusalem, for the sadness he sees in its future. Jesus certainly would weep at some of the things he sees in our world today. Although we are a very rich country and have a high employment rate at the present, there are some who are extremely wealthy to an excess, and others who are barely getting by. In our richest cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco, many lives in homes worth millions, while others cannot afford the rent on a small apartment. How are we working for peace and justice? How are we building bridges in order to solve our worst problems? Or are we more concerned with alliances and political gain instead of working together to solve those problems? Let us weep with Jesus in the face of the indifference, violence, poverty and apathy that we see around us. May unite our prayers with the prayers of Mary as we look for a way to make our society more compassionate and just.
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