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191.1
First Point
It
is not without reason that holy Church has made a great feast of the
Presentation of the Most Blessed Virgin, for it was on this day that she
consecrated herself to God to be entirely devoted to him for her whole
life. She did this not only to separate herself from the corruption of the
world, but to avoid all occasions for her mind to be taken up with vain
thoughts of the world, and to keep her heart from placing its affections
on created things, because her heart had been created only to love God and
to give itself totally to him. For this purpose it is believed on the
testimony of a pious and ancient author that, inspired not only by grace,
but even by her understanding, though she was still quite young, she made
a vow of perpetual chastity, so that, as Saint John Damascene says, with
her body totally free from all the pleasures of this life, she could
preserve her soul in great purity.
It was by withdrawing yourself from the world that you consecrated
yourself to God to live in this community with a complete detachment from
everything in the world which is able to satisfy your senses. In order to
settle down here in this community, you should consider the day you made
this move as the one on which your happiness on earth began, to be
completed one day in heaven. But it was not for that day alone that you
should have consecrated yourself to God, since you made a consecration of
your soul on that occasion, and since your soul will live forever, your
dedication to God must be forever. If you have begun this on earth, it
should have only been to carry out here a sort of apprenticeship of what
you will do eternally in heaven.
191.2
Second Point
The
Most Blessed Virgin dedicated herself entirely and without any reservation
to God on this holy day; her parents, who had accompanied her for this
holy action, left her in the temple in order to be brought up in its
precincts with other virgins, to devote herself there to the practice of
all sorts of virtue. For it was quite right that God, who would want one
day to make of Mary a temple for his divinity, should do something great
for her from her childhood by the eminence of the grace with which he
would honor her and by the excellence of the virtues he would produce in
her. This is why a pious author says that she constantly occupied herself
in the temple in the service of God and in the holy exercise of fasting
and prayer, which she practiced day and night. In that way this all-pure
virgin lived a holy life during the entire time she spent in the temple.
You have the happiness of being in God's house and you have bound
yourself to his service. You should:
(1) fill yourself with grace by the holy practice of prayer; (2)
strive to practice the virtues most befitting to your state. By these holy
exercises you will be able to fulfill your duties well, for you will not
fulfill them as God requires of you except insofar as you are faithful and
very assiduous to the holy practice of prayer. It will be by this means
that the Holy Spirit will come to you and will teach you, as Jesus
Christ promises his holy apostles, all the truths[i]
of religion and the maxims of Christianity which you should know and
practice very perfectly, since you are obliged to inspire them in others.
191.3
Third Point
The
sojourn of the Most Blessed Virgin in the temple resulted in making her
heart a holy temple for the Lord and a sanctuary for the Holy Spirit.[ii]
This is also what the Church sings about her on this holy day, that she
was the temple of the Lord and the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. Because
of this she is the only one who has pleased God in so perfect and so
exalted a manner that there never has been any creature who has been like
her. She is that daughter whom the Lord, according to the words of
Genesis, prepared for his Son as the day of the Lord drew near,[iii]
as told by a prophet. This is why God prepared her for himself beforehand
and made her a holy victim which he consecrated to himself.
As it says in the Apocalypse, she fled into the desert,[iv]
that is to say, the temple, which was a place separated from the usual
activities of people, where she made for herself a seclusion that God had
destined for her. For it was fitting to the Son of God before making his
dwelling in her, that she should no longer have external dealings with
ordinary people, but that all her dealing should be in the Lord's temple.
There she usually would be conversing even more with the angels than with
her companions, in order to make herself worthy to be greeted by an
angel on behalf of God.[v]
Honor the Most Blessed Virgin today as the tabernacle and the
living temple that God built,[vi]
adorned by God's own hands. Pray to her to obtain for you from God the
grace that your soul may be so well-adorned and so well-disposed to
receive the word of God and to communicate it to others, that you may
become through her intercession tabernacles of the divine Word.
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This
feast is based on a tradition that is without any biblical foundation for
its historicity. It was first celebrated by the pope when he was at
Avignon in 1372, though the Eastern Church had celebrated it many
centuries before. Pope Sixtus made it a feast for the universal Church in
1472; Pope Pius V (1566 - 1572) suppressed it, but Sixtus V (1585 - 1590)
restored it to the Roman breviary.
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