On Friday, November 21, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first reading that day, from the Book of Revelations, spoke of John eating the scroll given by the Angel. He ate it and and described it as “sweet as honey” in his mouth but then was made bitter in his stomach, just as the angel said it would. After the first reading, the responsorial Psalm was “How sweet to my taste is your promise!” How truly sweet are the promises of God—how beautiful, true, and good they are. I hear His words with great affection and allow it to enter my life so sweetly, but the bitterness is not in His promises, it’s my stomach. It’s in my heart and my stubbornness to truly allow His words to take root and change me.
However, there is hope for me because Jesus is at work in me just how He was at work at the temple when He drove out the bitter money changers and all those who turned the house prayer into a den of thieves (Gospel reading). By my own sinfulness, disobedience, selfishness, and pride, I have turned by body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, into a den of thieves. Because of this, what should be a house of sweet prayer and worship of God, has been turned into the worship of so many other things. Despite my sinfulness, my Lord Jesus heroically and fearlessly drives out from my heart what should not be there each time I present myself to Him.
The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminded me that my posture should be like Her’s, that is, one of presentation to the Lord, Who is the gift—the present. To present myself to the Present is to allow Him to do what He wants to me, with me, and in me. It’s to allow Him to drive out the things that are hindering me from true worship of the one true God. It’s about being obedient to the Church and His Mother which He has given me, to make me pure and holy, without blemish. It’s to allow Him, by His workings through the Sacraments and every grace, to make me a saint.
May Your Word, O LORD, be sweet as honey in my mouth, and most especially in my heart. May I not be bitter in receiving Your Love and allowing it to transform me. Prune me, blot out my transgressions, and make me white as snow. Amen.