PRESENTATION OF OUR LADY; 21st NOVEMBER

PRESENTATION OF OUR LADY

21st NOVEMBER



Today is the commemoration of the Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple at Jerusalem the age of three by SS Joachim and Anne - a presentation to God by which her life was offered up to Him as a sacrifice. This feast day is of particular importance to the monastic and contemplative orders.
This brings to mind the hierarchy of holiness whereby we are each called to practice our vocation with dedication. The sacrifice of marriage is a reflection of God, in a context within which life is created, a sacrament in which the husband and wife offer themselves to God to create a third entity - a bond which is stronger than the two individuals themselves, an entity which is eternal and which has both a material, physical, and metaphysical dimension.
There are degrees of dedication of one’s life within the different vocations – the third orders are examples of dedication within active or secular life. Oblates serve God with particular duties and impositions within their secular lives, conforming their lives to the Rules of the Order to which they subscribe. Such dedication of oneself, in the context of a renewal of vows, occurs throughout one’s life, in varying degrees, from Baptism, to confirmation, to the dedication made when one receives the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion. These dedications are oblations, because they reflect the sacrifices in the Temple whereby those by whom the sacrifice was made, together with the priest, retained a portion of the sacrifice. The highest of all the sacrifices made in the Temple was the Holocaust, in which the whole animal was offered to God and burnt completely.
St Thomas Aquinas and St Louis de Montfort referred to a hierarchy of holiness, of which the dedication of one’s life to God in a state of chastity is the highest, being the greatest sacrifice; a life lived alone, in complete dedication to God, is a holocaust. Therefore, monasteries or convents such as the Benedictines or the Carmelites are hothouses of prayer by which graces are poured out to the surrounding areas.
The temple used to contain the Ark of the Covenant – the Tablets of the Twelve Commandments, the Staff of Aaron and the Manna that was given to the Chosen people in the desert. The Temple was destroyed in 70 AD; Our Lady is known as the New Ark of the Covenant – she was a living example of the Ten Commandments, she bore the High Priest, Jesus Christ, and the Bread of Life, the Manna from Heaven.
On this feast day, in attaining a more complete dedication of our lives to God, we can offer our hearts to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be concealed inside her heart, to pray that she offer her heart, together with ours, to God.

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