THURSDAY, November 20

LITURGY OF THE DAY

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Thursday, November 20: Thirty-third Thursday in Ordinary Time

First Reading: 1 Maccabees 2: 15-29
Psalms: Psalm 50: 1-2, 5-6, 14-15, 23
Gospel Reading: Luke 19: 41-44

Friday, November 21:
The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

First Reading: 1 Maccabees 4: 36-37
Psalms: 1 Chronicles 29: 10-13
Gospel Reading: Luke 19: 45-48

PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

      This feast, established by Pope Gregory XI in 1372 honors the Blessed Virgin Mary, the "daughter of Zion" who was so faithful to the Jewish faith she was raised in. This feast commemorates when Mary's parents Saint Anne and Saint Joachim presented their precious daughter at the age of three in the temple of Jerusalem where she studied for several years. Even at the tender age of three Our Lady was expressing her fiat to God by her obedience to her parents and submitting totally to the tutelage of priests of the temple. This special chosen one who would become the New Covenant "temple of the Lord" first had to learn the Old Covenant temple of the Lord. All these things prepared her better for her role as the Mother of God, Mediatrix of all graces, Co-redemptrix and Advocate. It was vital for her first to be a willing pupil so she could, as a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, teach the Father's Divine Son all the Almighty wanted imparted. This feast was first celebrated in 543 by the Eastern Church on the occasion of the dedication of the basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary built in Jerusalem. This was subsequently destroyed by the Turks (Persians) about seventy years in 614. Exactly a century after Pope Gregory XI declared it a feast, Pope Sixtus IV extended it to the universal Church in 1472 to be celebrated on the twenty first of November each year.

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