The Presentation of the Virgin Mary is a mirror image, if you will, of the future Presentation of her Son in the Temple, both signifying a dedication to God from the earliest age, a noble and pious tradition in the Jewish and, later, Catholic religion. The account of Our Lady’s dedication is recounted in the apocryphal Gospel of James; her parents, Joachim and Anna, were childless, and were blessed in older age with Mary, conceived, as the Church would later declare, free from the spiritual effects of original sin. In thanksgiving, they consecrated their daughter to the Almighty, to do with her as He willed, something that Mary herself was to repeat at the Annunciation given her by the angel Gabriel.
God’s providence is, as the Catechism declares, ‘concrete and immediate’, guiding all things to their purpose and their final end. In fulfilling His plan, God asks for the free cooperation of human beings, made in His image, and for making that choice to do His will, we gain eternal beatitude, a share in His own life. Not a bad trade, that. All we have to do, with the Blessed Virgin and with her help, is say yes, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.