Today,
we celebrate the presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, which does not
have a direct reference in the Gospels, but can be traced to other first
century writings and to tradition in the early Church. Tradition teaches that Mary
was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem when she was a young girl. She must have spent a great deal of time in
the Temple preparing for her eventual role as the mother of our Lord and the
mother of 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 the annunciation. 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 and our modern secular society becomes a place that is hostile to the
values of Christ’s Good News.
Although
Mary probably spent much time in the Temple and in the study of Jewish
Scripture and tradition, she also probably spent a lot of time with St. Anne
and St. Joachim, her mother and father, growing up in a loving family who
exposed her to the reality of life around her, including the sufferings of the
poor. Mary was full of grace, as declared by the Angel Gabriel, but I also
imagine that her parents and her upbringing fostered and encouraged her empathy
and compassion, her generosity and humility, her hospitality and
forgiveness.
May
the example of the Virgin Mary encourage us as we travel along our own journey
of faith. It's so easy to squander those gifts and talents that the Lord gives
us, to not want to invest them in the same God wants us to, enabling us to
produce results for the kingdom. May the
Virgin Mary be an example of Christian love and virtue for us in how we should
live our lives of faith, to encourage us to live a life of faith in service to
the Lord.
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