Purification of The Blessed Virgin Mary.
Illustration: UNA VOCE OF ORANGE COUNTY
Artist: René de Cramer.
“Copyright Brunelmar/Ghent/Belgium”.
Used with Permission.
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guæranger, O.S.B.
Volume 3.
Christmas.
Book II.
The forty days of Mary’s Purification are now completed, and she must go up to the Temple, there to offer to God her Child Jesus.
Before following the Son and His Mother, in this their mysterious journey, let us spend our last few moments at Bethlehem [Editor: “House of Bread”], in lovingly pondering over the mysteries at which we are going to assist.
The Law commanded that a woman who had given birth to a son should not approach the Tabernacle for the term of forty days; after which time, she was to offer up a lamb as a holocaust, and a turtle-dove as a sin offering.
But, if she were poor, and could not provide a lamb, she was to offer in its stead a second turtle-dove.
By another ordinance of the Law, every first-born son was to be considered as belonging to God, and was to be redeemed by five sicles, each sicle weighing, according to the standard of the Temple, twenty obols.
Mary was a daughter of Israel — she had given birth to Jesus — He was her first-born Son.
Could such a Mother and such a Son be included in the Laws we have just quoted ? Was it becoming that Mary should observe them ?
If she considered the spirit of these legal enactments, and why God required the ceremony of Purification, it was evident that she was not bound to them. They, for whom these Laws had been made, were espoused to men; Mary was the chaste Spouse of The Holy Ghost, a Virgin in conceiving and a Virgin in giving birth to her Son; her purity had ever been spotless [Editor: In German “unbefleckt”] as that of the Angels.
But it received an incalculable increase by her carrying the God of all Sanctity in her womb, and bringing Him into this world.
Moreover, when she reflected upon her Child being the Creator and Sovereign Lord of all things, how could she suppose that He was to be submitted to the humiliation of being ransomed as a slave, whose life and person are not His own ?
And, yet, The Holy Ghost revealed to Mary that she must comply with both these Laws. She, the Holy Mother of God, must go to the Temple like other Hebrew mothers, as though she had lost something which needed restoring by a legal sacrifice.
He, that is the Son of God and Son of Man, must be treated in all things as though He were a servant, and be ransomed in common with the poorest Jewish boy.
Mary adores the will of God, and embraces it with her whole heart.
The Son of God was only to be made known to the world by gradual revelations. For thirty years, he led a hidden life in the insignificant village of Nazareth; and during all that time men took Him to be “the son of Joseph”.
It was only in His thirtieth year that John the Baptist announced Him, and then only in mysterious words, to the Jews, who flocked to the River Jordan, there to receive from The Prophet the Baptism of Penance.
Our Lord, Himself, gave the next revelation, the testimony of His wonderful works and Miracles. Then came the humiliations of His Passion and Death, followed by His glorious Resurrection, which testified to the truth of His Prophecies, proved the infinite merits of His Sacrifice, and, in a word, proclaimed His Divinity.
