Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: November 21 (Fr. Karl Esker, C.Ss.R.)

The Good Word

Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time II

November 21, 2024 – Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Hello and welcome to the Word, bringing you the Good News of Jesus Christ every day from the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province. I am Fr. Karl Esker from the Basilica of our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, NY. Today is the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke

As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace– but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

The gospel of the Lord.

Homily

I have often wondered about the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple, because there is no hint of it in the gospels. The story comes from the Protoevangelium of James, a second century collection of pious stories that tries to fill in the blanks in the gospel accounts about the lives of Jesus and Mary. This document also gives us the names of Joachim and Anna, the parents of Mary. Since the liturgical feasts of Mary parallel the feasts of Jesus, I wondered if the date of this memorial had anything to do with the purification of Anna, eighty days after the birth of Mary; but no, there are only 74 days between the memorial of the birth of Mary and the memorial of her presentation in the Temple. The date celebrates the inauguration of the New Church of the Mother of God, built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the year 543 near the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple.

Mary’s presentation is actually a parallel to the prophet Samuel’s presentation. Just as Samuel’s mother Hanna, in thanksgiving for being cured of her bareness, presented him to God in the sanctuary of Shiloh, when he was three years old, so too, Mary’s parents Joachim and Anna consecrate her to God at three years old in the Temple in Jerusalem. What we celebrate is not so much a historical fact, as the spirit with which Mary dedicated herself to God from her very childhood under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who filled her with grace to become the temple where the Son of God would take on human flesh.

Just as Mary’s cooperation with God’s plan for our salvation began early in her childhood, and carried on throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, passion, death and resurrection, and into the early years of the Church, so too it did not end with her life on earth. As Jesus wept over Jerusalem because its inhabitants did not recognize the time of their visitation, Mary with her son in heaven weeps over the many people who in the midst of violence, war and misfortune, continue blind to the saving presence of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. That may explain why Mary has appeared throughout the centuries in many countries across the world to call people back to prayer and faith in Jesus so that he may gather them together into God’s kingdom, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

In today’s gospel we hear Jesus’ lament over the destruction that would overwhelm Jerusalem, because they rejected their true savior to follow a human, political one. The first reading from the book of Revelation proclaims Christ, the all-powerful and all knowledgeable Lamb of God who will protect his people in the terrible times of persecution and natural disasters they were facing. As the sacred writers encouraged their communities and us to remain faithful to Jesus in every circumstance, so too Mary by her example and intercession directs our eyes, mind and heart to Jesus, and calls us to cling to him, Son of God and Savior of the World.

May God bless you.

Fr. Karl E. Esker CSsR

Basilica of our Lady of Perpetual Help

Brooklyn, NY