Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Our Lady of Health
The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Temple recalls – according to the aprocrifi gospels – the day when Mary, still a child, goes to the temple in Jerusalem and offers herself to God.
What interests the Church is to emphasize not so much the historical event in itself, of which there is no trace in the Gospels, but the total gift of self that, in listening – “Blessed are those who listen to the word of God and observe it” – prepared the young woman of Nazareth to become “the temple of the Son”.
On this same day, November 21, we also celebrate the most famous feast of Mary, Our Lady of Health, a holiday established in the Venetian Republic in 1630 but then spread everywhere.
This anniversary and tradition originates after the plague that struck the whole of northern Italy between 1630 and 1631, of which Alessandro Manzoni also mentions in “I Promessi Sposi”. Faced with the spread of the disease and not knowing how to remedy it, the government of the Republic organized a prayer procession to the Madonna to such an extent that on October 22, 1630 the Doge made a vow to erect a temple dedicated to her if the city had survived.
A few weeks later, there was a sharp collapse of the epidemic and in November 1631 the emergency due to the epidemic was over. Since then it was established to call the Madonna with the title “of Health”. The Doge had made a vow and, having identified the area, the basilica was erected, inaugurated on 28 November 1687.
Also on November 21, the Church – by the will of Pius XII, since 1953 also celebrates the Pro Orantibus Day, dedicated to cloistered life.
While he was still speaking to the crowd, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside and tried to speak to him. Someone said to him, “Behold, your mother and your siblings are outside and trying to talk to you.” And when he answered the one who spoke to him, he said, Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Then, reaching out his hand to his disciples, he said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is for me brother, sister and mother” (Mt 12, 46-50).
They don’t have any more wine
Maria, Donna and Madre, do not miss the “lacks” of the house. He notices the absence of wine. And she becomes provident, intercedes with the Son Jesus to remedy it.
What moves her is the certainty that nothing is impossible to God, as the angel told her at the Annunciation. Jesus resists – “Woman, my hour has not yet come”, he replies – but then he yields. At Cana Mary reveals herself as the “believer” in Jesus,
She who, thanks to her faith, provokes the first “sign” of Jesus. Wine is the symbol of joy, of the feast, of joy: to say that wine is missing, it means that the wedding party lacks the ingredient par excellence, joy.
Mary, thanks to her intercession, is the one who notices and who provides for the water of embarrassment, of fear … soon turning into the joy of the feast. So she did in Cana, so Mary, Our Lady of Health, does with those who invoke her and rely on her.
The servants
Those who follow the event step by step, are the servants, who take the jars, fill them with water to the brim and surprised, they realize to distribute wine.
From servants to witnesses, because through obedience, they find themselves protagonists of a “fact” that everyone will talk about. And they are the first witnesses. In the face of the “signs” that God continues to work in us and around us, we can also move from being “servants” to being “witnesses”, narrators of the great things that God can do among us, through our humble and fragile obedience.
An experience made possible because it is “obedient” to the order of the Virgin Mary.
Gift and commitment
On this day of celebration, the “gift” that Mary makes of herself to God is thus intertwined, and the commitment to live life, animated by faith, certain that God himself will provide (Gn 22).
Where everything seems impossible for man, everything becomes possible in those who believe in God and with confidence relies on the intercession of Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother.
Prayer to Our Lady of Health
Most Holy Virgin,
venerated by us under the title
of Our Lady of Health,
Get us from God the health
of the soul and body,
so that, purified from all guilt
and invigorated in the limbs,
We can always better serve Him
in all the days of our lives,
So as to deserve the eternal prize.
Amen.
fonte © Vatican News – Dicasterium pro Communicatione
