4:00 pm, Mass and Homily
The
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(Thirty-Fourth
or Last Week in Ordinary Time)
Rv 14:1-3, 4b-5
Lk 21:1-4
O
Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving be
every Moment Thine!
One
of the sobering aspects of the liturgical renewal since Vatican II has to be
the tragic lot of certain feasts and memorials in the official, universal, church
calendar. Some saints days and feasts devoted to mysteries of the faith disappeared
without a trace back 50 years ago in the calendar reform. Unexpectedly, especially
under Pope Saint John Paul II some of them have made their reappearance. The
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple in Jerusalem is just such
a one of these.
From
the Gospels we know nothing of Mary’s infancy and childhood. The Blessed Virgin
comes on the scene in the Gospel with the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel
that she was to be the Mother of God. All we know about her before that time,
her parent’s names, Joachim and Ann, everything we know from the Church’s Tradition
which, it is important to remember, is the source of the 4 Gospels, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. It is the Church which gave us the New Testament, and
which canonized for us the inspired books of the Old Testament as well.
Mary
in her Presentation offers us a preeminent example of childhood sanctity,
something we encounter in the lives of a lot of the saints, especially of those
who as children lived intense lives of communion with God and died young as
well, some as martyrs and just as many whom the Lord took home to Himself
already in their childish or youthful perfection in His Divine Love.
As
we continue to contemplate Christ present here on our altar in the Blessed
Sacrament, the King of our hearts and Ruler of our lives, let us also reflect
upon the Mother of God, on Mary, conceived without original sin and never in
all her days on earth tainted by even the least moral flaw.
We cannot claim
anything like that for ourselves, so let us pray as the Church does on the
feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga: “O God, giver of heavenly gifts, who in Saint
Aloysius Gonzaga joined penitence to a wonderful innocence of life, grant,
through his merits and intercession, that, though we have failed to follow him
in innocence, we may imitate him in penitence.”
With Mary and
all the saints, please, God, that it would be so!
O Sacrament
Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving be every Moment
Thine!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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