Significance of Our Lady’s Presentation

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WITH the Memorial of the Presentation of Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on November 21, we are reminded that Our Lady, even at her young age, dedicated herself to God’s service. It highlights Our Lady’s total dedication to God’s will through her life of profound prayer and contemplation. It’s definitely a Memorial that should inspire us to follow Our Lady’s example.

Like Our Lady, we should try our best to offer unwavering dedication to God’s plan, even when it would seem impossible or very challenging. We should not be afraid to enter into a serious commitment with God and remain faithful to it, no matter how things go.

But how can we be faithful to our commitments given our obvious limitations and imperfections, and the unavoidable mistakes we can commit along the way? The answer is simply to grow in love, like that of Our Lady. It is to enter into the dynamics of love that needs to grow and grow without measure.

It is this love that can conquer everything, including sin and death. It is this love that can make everything new. As St. Paul would put it, it is the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor 13,7)

To be sure, putting ourselves in the dynamics of love would also perfect us the way God our Creator wants us to be, and not just how we want ourselves to be. If we can only remember this basic truth, we most certainly would have enough motive to go on loving in spite of all the difficulties, challenges, trials, mistakes, etc., we can meet in living our commitments.

Everyday, we just have to find ways to grow in our love a little bit more. And this does not necessarily mean that we have to undertake extraordinary acts. It can only mean putting more love in the usual little things that we do everyday. And this can be done easily.

We need to overcome our tendency to be easily overtaken by routine and boredom. That is why we have to pause from time to time, and even spend some time praying and meditating, so that we can put that impulse of greater love in the ordinary duties of our day.

Our problem is that we tend to put limits and to say enough to our self-giving. While it’s true that in our material and temporal dimensions, we certainly have limits—and it’s good that we acknowledge them and abide by them—in our spiritual dimension we are capable of giving ourselves infinitely.

We need to see to it that we know how to blend our material and spiritual dimensions, without confusing them as we exercise them to their fullest capabilities. We need to adapt the relevant attitude and to learn the pertinent skills, art and virtues.

The fidelity to our commitments should be carried out in true freedom such that at any given moment we should find ourselves driven by love, where eagerness to do things is quite conspicuous, where there is always a go-go attitude marking our behavior. True love cannot remain stagnant. It is by definition dynamic, productive, fruitful and creative.

To be sure, this fidelity to our commitments will perfect us the way God wants us to be. We are supposed to be “the image and likeness of God.” And since God is love, we too ought to be characterized by that divine love as shown in our fidelity to our commitments.

This is how we can mirror the fidelity of Our Lady to God’s will and ways!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com