The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which we celebrate today, memorializes Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, who brought her to the Temple to consecrate her to God. At the time, all young Jewish girls were traditionally left in the temple’s care for a period of time, where they received education and faith formation. This memorial originated in the Orient around the seventh century. The Western Church adopted it in the 14th century. Mary grew up to birth the Son of God, the Savior of the world and became the first disciple as she modeled for all future disciples what “yes” to God means. She heard the word of God and kept it. That obedience, more than biological motherhood, gave both an infant Jesus and an adult Christ to the world. And in this, Mary wants imitation, not admiration. Our task, symbolically, is to give birth to Christ in our lives. From her, we get the pattern of “birthing” Christ: Let the word of God take root and make you pregnant; gestate that by giving it the nourishing sustenance of your own life; submit to the pain that is demanded for it to be born to the outside; then spend years coaxing it from infancy to adulthood; and finally, during and after all of this, do some pondering, accept the pain of not understanding and of letting go.