Today we celebrate an important truth about Mary: From infancy onward, she was dedicated to God, totally committed to letting God’s purposes be fulfilled in her life. Because of her dedication from an early age, she was called by God to become an even greater temple than the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. If the Jerusalem temple was the house of God, the place where Yahweh was believed to be present in a special way, Mary became the house of the Lord in an even greater way, because in her womb she carried the Lord until she give birth to him. God came to dwell in her, through Jesus, because she was open to divine influence from the earliest years of her life.
Our Blessed Lady is the prime example of the group that Jesus refers to in today’s gospel as those “who do the will of my Father in heaven.” Today’s feast celebrates the fact that from her childhood Mary was devoted to the will of of the living God, and was therefore ready to become the temple of God’s Son at the time of God’s choosing. We too are called to do the will of the Father in heaven so that we also can be temples of the Lord, carrying Lord’s presence to others. This feast echoes Paul’s words, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple?” We ask Mary to pray for us now so that we may always do the will of the Father and so become temples of the living God.
Source: Assoc. of Catholic Priests
