21st November 2018
"*The Presentation of the*Blessed Virgin Mary*
Our Lady's parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, took her from Nazareth to the Temple in Jerusalem _(a distance of some 80 miles)_ to consecrate her to God, when she was just 3 years of age, in fulfilment of a vow they had made and the Blessed Virgin Mary was to remain in the temple of Jerusalem to be prepared for her future role as the Mother of God.
Twelve years of recollection and prayer, contemplation and sufferings, were the preparation of the chosen one of God. The tender soul of Mary was adorned with the most precious graces and became an object of astonishment and praise for the holy Angels, as well as of the highest complacency for the adorable Trinity.
The celebration of the feast began with the dedication of the Basilica of Holy Mary, which was constructed in 543 near where the great Temple had been in Jerusalem. This basilica was later destroyed but the feast had by then spread all through the Middle-East.
In the West, this feast was first adopted in 1373 when the Papacy was in Avignon.
🎯
_(Avignon is a city in the south of France where the papacy spent several years in exile because of political crisis in Rome)_
Catholic art on the Presentation of Mary usually focuses on the figure of the little girl Mary climbing the steps of the Great Temple of Jerusalem, having left her parents at the bottom, and approaching the Chief Priest and other Temple figures at the top of the steps.
The Presentation was one of the traditional scenes illustrating the Life of the Blessed Virgin.
St. Alphonsus De Liguori urges us to imitate our Lady by becoming detached from all earthly things, even our lawful attachments to parents, and so to *"present ourselves today to Mary without reserve."*
Our Lady revealed to St. Elizabeth of Hungary how she was determined as a little girl *"to have only God for her father and often meditated on how she might please Him most."
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcS7hjCiAtSKuEN27F0LDj9mUrTNZDbHbhMvHHjjuGgqa--zbqL6)