She Offers Her Son
Feast of the Purification 2016
After childbirth, the Hebrew women were considered ritually unclean because of the shedding of their blood. The Blessed Mother was exempt from all the requirements of the law, because she had not shed blood in her virginal birth and because she had no need for a sin offering. The newborn children were required to be presented to the temple to show that they belonged to God first and were only loaned to their natural parents for a time. This presentation of Our Lord was a portent of that day on which the Virgin Mary would offer her Divine Son on Calvary to God the Father. This feast was celebrated in the most ancient days of the Church in the Holy Land, and was used as a means of combating a pagan celebration of the time. The use of the powerful sacramental of the candle is a testament to our glorious and bloodstained past, when the Mass was offered by candlelight in the catacombs.
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