Our Name
 
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the full name of our parish and school, was chosen to commemorate and celebrate the importance of Jesus' mother, Mary.
 
The presentation of Mary in the Jerusalem Temple by her parents is not found in Scripture. It is recounted in an apocryphal work called the Infancy Gospel of James. It’s an early Christian writing, perhaps as early as the second century, but one never considered to be inspired, never accepted into the Bible. According to the author, Mary’s parents Anna and Joachim were childless. Anna promised that if she were given a child, that child would belong to the Lord. She did conceive and did give birth to a child and named her Mary.
 
When Mary was three years of age, they brought her to the temple, there to be raised in God’s house. The author writes: "And Mary was in the temple nurtured like a dove and received food from the hand of an angel." The story is a legend and without foundation in history. Young children were never offered at the temple. They did not live there, they weren’t raised or educated there.
 
But the reason for the story, its point, is clear: even from her childhood, Mary fully belonged to God. She was dedicated, devoted to God’s service, to God’s plan for our salvation. She is involved in the paschal mystery as no other human being has been. She is the one by whose free consent, motivated by divine grace, God the Word became a human being. Her closeness both to Jesus and to us has led the church throughout the centuries to see in her the guarantee of the humanity of the Word of God. The church also sees in Mary the first faithful disciple of Jesus, redeemed herself by faith in one who had become flesh through her. We see in her the remarkable working of grace, the same remarkable working of grace we should see in ourselves.
 
November 21 is the Feast of the Presentation of Mary.