| ‘ O consecrated Virgin, offer
your son and present to the Lord the blessed fruit of your womb. Offer for our
reconciliation to all, this holy victim, agreeable to God. The Father will
fully accept this new sacrifice, this precious oblation (victim) of whom he
himself has said: “This is my well beloved Son in whom I have put my
love” (Mt 3, 7). |
This text presupposes
familiarity with the Gospel text of the Presentation of
Christ. |
| ‘But this offering, my brothers,
may seem rather easy to you since the victim offered to the Lord is redeemed by
birds, and therefore released. The time will come when this victim will no
longer be offered in the Temple, nor in the arms of Simeon, but outside the
city and in the arms of the cross. The time will come when the victim will not
be redeemed by anything else, but when it will redeem others by the price of
its blood. Then it will be the evening sacrifice. Now we are still at the
sacrifice of the morning. This one, surely, is more pleasant; the other one
will be more complete. The word of prophecy comes through: “He has been
sacrificed because he has wanted it” (Is 52,7). If he is offered today [at
the Presentation], in fact, this is not because he needs to be offered, nor
that he falls under the law, but because he himself wanted it. Also on the
cross he was offered, not because he deserved it, neither because the Jews
could do it, but because he wanted it himself.’ |
‘In
Purificatione Mariae’, Sermo III, in Sancti Bernardi Opera Omnia,
ed. J. Mabillon, Paris 1982, p. 370 col. b |
| “St. Bernard
calls Mary ‘consecrated’ because she was consecrated to the priestly
function of offering sacrifice . . . .Mary carries in herself a priestly soul
of the highest degree...Her soul was bathed through the anointing of the Holy
Spirit who covered her with his shadow. In this way a true royal and mystical
priesthood was conferred on her.... Mary became for Jesus both priest and
altar, the priest and the altar of this offering of the lamb of God anticipated
on the day of her purification. ” |
Commentary by D.
Nogues, Mariologie de S. Bernard, Paris 1935, p. 150. |
