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Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)Today we consider an endearing and little known mystery of redemption. Tradition maintains - and so the liturgy celebrates - that little Mary was offered to the Lord by her parents, Joaquin and Ana. That was done through the Presentation, that is, by taking Mary to the Temple.
This was an extraordinary and normal fact simultaneously. "Extraordinary" because Jewish parents had a religious duty to present the first child to the Lord, not if he was a girl, but a boy (as Mary and Joseph did with Jesus at his 40 days). "Normal" if we consider that between the lives of Mary and Jesus there is a clear theological parallelism: it is "normal" that little Mary was offered to God because from her very conception (immaculate) she was all of the Lord (and so she lived her adolescence). She was not aware of her Immaculate Conception (she did not know until Archangel Gabriel told her), but she was consistent ...
—On that day of the Presentation, the Temple received God for the first time (even if no one noticed): Mary carried the Holy Spirit.