Originally published at The Catholic Thing
Mary offers herself, consecrates herself to God, in the Temple, and by the sacrifice she makes to him of her fidelity to the engagement she contracts, she presents a model to a religious soul who has made the same sacrifice to God and has contracted the same engagements – Mary is scarcely arrived at that age when children do not know themselves and give only equivocal signs of reason when going to the Temple, she consecrates herself to God, as a victim of penance, devotes herself to absolute poverty perfect obedience, and perpetual virginity it was undoubtedly very proper, that a heart, which has to be the Sanctuary of God himself, should form no desires but for heaven, that Mary should separate herself from all creatures in her very infancy, that she should keep her soul unaccessible to all worldly thoughts and images and that a total separation from the world should maintain within her that peace, that silence in which God delights and which is a shadow of his eternal rest it was meet that all the affections of Mary should have no other object than him whose Mother she was to be one day, but God wished also
