About forty days had elapsed since the birth of our Savior at Bethlehem, and the time had now come when Jesus was to be presented to the Lord in the Temple, and the sacrifice was to be offered for the purification of the Mother. As an acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over the Chosen People, whether as the source of all blessing in childbirth or as the liberator of Israel from Egyptian bondage, God had not only set aside the Levites as His peculiar property in place of the entire…