Presentation of Our Lord Year C, 2025

 

(Mal. 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40) 

There are a few things we should note about St. Luke’s gospel account of Mary and Joseph bringing the Child Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem.  First of all, since it was not necessary for them to bring the Child to the Temple, why did they choose to do so?  Secondly, Luke tells us:

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,” 

However, the Law prescribes that the firstborn of man should be ‘redeemed’, not ‘presented’ 

You shall dedicate to the LORD every newborn that opens the womb, and every first- born male of your animals will belong to the LORD.  Every human firstborn of your sons you must redeem. (Exodus 13:12-13)

The price of redemption was five Temple shekels, the money going towards the upkeep of the Temple worship and the support of the priests of Levi who had no land in Israel in order to be totally devoted to the worship of the Lord.  Since no redemption price was paid for Jesus -- only the sacrificial offering of a pair of turtle doves for Mary’s purification according to the Law -- there is no question of Mary’s first-born Son being bought back, redeemed, as the Law laid down, and that is why Luke changed the wording of the Law and spoke of Mary and Joseph presenting the infant Jesus to the Lord.   That very presentation -- doing something unique for this unique Gift from God -- was the reason for their bringing the Child to the Temple in Jerusalem: in the mind of Mary there was no question of ‘redeeming’ -- buying Him back -- from God, on the contrary, in acknowledgement of His ‘gifting’ to her (and to us) by God, Mary was, of her own initiative and  free will, bringing Him to God’s Temple in order in order to present Him to His Father: to offer Him along with the childhood-long years of her own worshipful service of maternal love, cherishing, and teaching, to present Him to His Father, God, for God‘s purposes on earth:

They took Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer (for Mary’s purification) the sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” in accordance with the dictate of the law of the Lord.

Just as Samuel had been given to the Lord in the old Temple of Shiloh by his mother Hannah in thanksgiving that the opprobrium of childlessness had been taken from her, so here Jesus is presented by Mary to the Lord in the Temple at Jerusalem.   He was consecrated to the Father before His birth on earth and in His birth; here His Mother acknowledges God’s claim on her human Son and, yielding her own claims upon Him, presents Him to His Father in the Temple, with a sense of gratitude immeasurably greater than that of Hannah (Lk:46-48):

Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.   For He has looked upon His handmaid’s lowliness.”

See how wonderfully that holy Mother co-operates with her Son in the work of our salvation!  At this, her very first opportunity, Mary does what her Son cannot yet Himself physically do: for, graciously aware of the depths of her own lowliness she offers Him – out of heart-felt personal gratitude and with wondrous sensitivity to the working of the Spirit of the Son within her -- to His Father of Whom we are told in the letter to the Hebrews (10: 5-7):

For this reason, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in.  Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”

Here Mary is shown as the perfect realization of the ‘daughter of Sion’, following in the steps of Abraham, who, when leading his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice on Mount Zion, said:

            My son, God will provide for Himself the sheep for the burnt offering. (Gen. 22:8)

Abraham became the father of Israel and indeed our father in faith because he had been willing and prepared to sacrifice his only, beloved, son Isaac, in obedience to God.  However, at the point of sacrifice, the Lord intervened and said:

Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.  (Genesis 22:12)

Isaac was not the lamb of God, nor was Abraham‘s obedient -- though heavy -- heart a full foreshadowing of the future.  For, when the old covenant was come to its fulfilment, Mary, the supreme daughter of Abraham was offering, presenting, her Son entirely to God His Father with a most wonderfully grateful and rejoicing heart:

Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

The New Covenant was at hand, and this Presentation of the Infant Jesus is the very first fully, purely, Christian act, Christian sacrificial act … Mary offering her Son to His Father for His, indeed soon to be, both Their, purpose(s).  As the annotators of the of ‘The Jewish Annotated New Testament’ make perfectly clear, “no law prescribes this presentation, presenting children at the Temple is not a recognized custom”. 

It is true that Mary did not as yet know what would be asked of her: she did not foresee the Crucifixion.  Nevertheless, her offering to God was given in total faith and sincerity, complete trust and self-abandonment.  Therefore, having presented Him to the Lord, she was not called to leave Him in the Temple as Hannah had done with Samuel.  Samuel had been left with Eli the high priest; here, there was none worthy to bring up Jesus save Mary His immaculate mother, and therefore He went back with her to Nazareth and began learning, as we are told:

To grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; with the grace of God upon Him.

God accepted at the Presentation Mary’s offering of her Son, as an implicitly sacrificial, TOTALLY CHRISTIAN offering made under the supreme guidance and sublime inspiration of the Spirit of her Son, the Holy Spirit of Truth and of Love, already working fully, freely, and unrestrainedly, in her.  In the subsequent hidden years of life in Nazareth she helped her Son become a man before God:

He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest. (Hebrews 2:17)

Unbeknown to Mary, the Spirit of her Son was already leading her, preparing her, for the time when He would leave her, first of all to enter upon His public mission, and when, finally, He would be taken from her in the Crucifixion.  This preparation began to be revealed to Mary almost immediately after she had presented her Son in the Temple, for the prophet Simeon came upon the scene and said to her:

Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed -- and a sword will pierce even your own soul -- to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

And we can glimpse how gently God would lead her over the years ahead, for, lest those words of Simeon should hang around in her memory like some small but threatening cloud on the distant horizon, the prophetess Anna came shortly after Simeon with a paean of praise for the Child and for God:

She began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of (the Child) to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

It was with such mysterious words of wonder, joy, and hope that Mary and Joseph:

            returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth.

The work of our redemption was beginning with God and man, One in Jesus; and with Mary co-operating in wondrous responsiveness to the Spirit, both in the birth, and now in the Presentation, of her Son.  This presentation of her Son by Mary was no blind gesture, rather it was the occasion when she seized with both hands a blessing offered her by God, affirming it most solemnly in the Temple at Jerusalem; and then, over the subsequent thirty years,  confirming it by her daily, humble, faith and prayerful trust under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, as He prepared her to be able to fully and finally live out the offering she had so spontaneously and whole-heartedly made in the Temple.

It is frequently like that with us, People of God.  We can be called, invited, to respond to God with decisive self-commitment, and that moment is not the time to want to think out, anticipate and foresee, all that might result from such an invitation.   God wants our response of humble trust and total commitment; for He Himself will enable us to carry out what He has encouraged and invited us to take on.  Mary was totally pure, and that does not simply mean sin-less, it also means totally self-less before God, totally unselfish in her response to His will … God often wants to find something of that purity in us her children too.

3rd Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10; 1st. Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21) 

            And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.

Dear friends and members of the Body of Christ , those few words contain the whole of the Gospel after His baptism by John the Baptist and His heavenly manifestation by the Most Holy Trinity Itself:

            Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.

He returned to that part of the country where, we are told,  men wanted to know above all ‘what a chap was like’, ‘what sort of a fellow’ he was; not, first and foremost, what he thought about the current crop of spiritual ideas, or the social reaction to the most recent exercise of political authority.

Pharisees and Sadducees, Temple High Priests and their enforcers, Herodians, Romans and their collaborators, and revolutionaries of all sorts …. All of these were powerful, prominent, or important in Jerusalem because of their religious words and spiritual ambitions, such as the Pharisees;  because of the traditional authority they so proudly represented and clung-to so tenaciously, such as the High Priests; or because of their potential threat to the current  ‘establishment’, by all who lusted for a greater share in Roman power by collaboration or by violence and uprisings.  

How far apart were such Jerusalemites from the men of Galilee who looked at a man first of all to get to know something about who he was; which was in full accord with God’s plan for our salvation whereby He sent One, whose Person He called us to believe in.   Yes, indeed, dear People of God, we believe in Jesus’ teaching because it is His teaching – His words and His actions -- not because of some particular conformity with our thoughts or aspirations.

Modern people have so many points of difference with the historical Jesus … but, ignoring the blatant contradictions, let us just look at one of the more insidious points of difference they have with Jesus’ actions rather than with His words.

Jesus did not apologize to Mary and Joseph who had left the caravan returning  from Jerusalem to Nazareth in order to find Him, after three-days searching and worrying, talking with the doctors in the Temple precincts.  There are some, moralizers, who say He should have done so.  But that means they are saying Jesus did something morally wrong, and they would then be left facing Mary Immaculate and a Jesus … at least mixed-up.  And of course they would also be then putting their moral judgements above Jesus’ own moral awareness.  Altogether unacceptable, because they are not keeping their eyes on the Person of Jesus.  If they are to be allowed to overlook the Person of Jesus in that way, they can have no authentic idea nor appreciation of the Most Holy Trinity.   Moralizers thus down-grade Jesus, and lose for themselves the ‘outlandishly’ authentic beauty of Jesus’ teaching on the majesty of deep, self-less, exclusive and authentic, love of God.

Dear People of God. No one can love an idea sufficiently for God; that is why He ultimately transcended Israel’s lovely prophet-teachers by sending --- in our flesh --- His only-begotten Son, to be one of us, in Mary’s human  flesh and blood.  You true disciples of Jesus  …  KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PERSON OF HIM you want to love more.  If you  at times will, need to, study the ‘morality’ of His actions or words, do it humbly, not always chipping-away at the magnificent edifice He has left us, but always and only trying to understand it by eyes lit-up and enlightened by love. 

2nd Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Isaiah 62:1-5; 1st. Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11) 

On emerging from the waters of the Jordan after His baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus was greeted by God witnessing to His Personal divinity as Son, and being given the mission of saving God’s People from their thraldom to sin:

The Spirit immediately drove Him out into the wilderness (for) forty days, being tempted by Satan. (Mark 1: 12-13)

There, in the Judaean wilderness, Jesus’ holiness was confronted by the lying Serpent to begin a contest that would only be resolved when Satan’s apparently ultimate triumph – Jesus’ death on a Roman Cross – was transfigured by Jesus’ ‘Fiat’ of love and obedience to His Father into His ultimate saving work for our salvation. This initial confrontation, however, was ended after forty days, when the devil retired until a later time; whereupon Jesus – in the power of the Spirit, Luke tells us -- set out for Galilee with some committed disciples.

 On the way home to Galilee Jesus ‘dropped-in’ on a wedding feast where His mother was one of the guests invited along with Jesus and His disciples.   Mary seems to have thought that Jesus’  arrival was providential, for she immediately had something to ask of Him concerning the newly-wed couple:

The mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine." 

Jesus did not think that was a matter to concern Him Personally: He had recently been manifested as Son of God and ‘installed’ as Israel’s Messiah at His baptism, and He had come to Galilee (with five newly-chosen disciples) to begin His Public Ministry  in accordance with His Father’s saving will, which was that He should reverse Satan’s original victory over Adam and Eve. Jesus most certainly did not want His Father’s commission to be immediately prejudiced by His mother’s emotional involvement with the married couple. His mind being centred on His Father’s ‘commission’, He did most clearly remember Eve’s close association with the original ‘garden’ wounding of His Father’s heart ….  and spineless Adam’s subsequent  words of blame against God:

The WOMAN whom YOU gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree.

Therefore Jesus, totally committed to His heavenly Father, said:

            WOMAN, what does this have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.

Mary apparently wanted Jesus to use His ‘mission power’ to accommodate her personal wishes first of all, therefore Jesus said:   WOMAN!

However, God the Father had a particular appreciation of Mary who had devoted herself totally to the welfare of her Child – His Word made flesh -- by nourishing and protecting Him, but above all, by teaching Him all she knew of God: opening up her own mind and heart to her Child in order that He might learn first how to pray and then how to respond to God in heaven as a true Israelite, indeed, as the Chosen One of a Chosen People.

Now Mary is about to be rewarded, acknowledged, for what she had done for God's Son throughout His childhood years: she is to be inspired to help her Son  define and make manifest the hidden nature and purpose of His work of salvation – a marriage of world-wide and eternal significance: the heavenly union of redeemed mankind with the God of their creation – by His, Jesus’, joyfully embracing and enabling the earthly, but now to be ‘heavenly-graced’ celebrations of this, most needy, newly-wedded couple.

How did Mary, under God's inspiration, do this? Very simply, as you would expect:

            His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."

Jesus immediately, instinctively recognized His Father’s influence on, and gift to, His ‘strangely inconsistent’ mother, who now wanting not her own will, but whatever Jesus might want.

The heavenly Father was inspiring Mary to give her Son a mother’s blessing as He began His work of salvation: a work that would lead by way of the Cross to His most glorious Resurrection.  God would not take Mary's Son from her: He had not done that to Abraham, He would not do that to Mary.  Mary, however, being greater than Abraham, was uniquely privileged to bless her Son’s future mission by helping Him choose this most appropriate occasion of love, commitment, and joy for His first miracle.  Isaiah's prophecy was being fulfilled in Mary herself, the supreme member of new-born Mother-Church:

You (Zion) shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  (Isaiah 62:3)

The gifts of God cannot be numbered, and no one is left un-gifted, such is St. Paul’s message today; and some of those gifts are, as might be expected, beyond our imagining:

People of God, all who are serious disciples of Jesus must be convinced that He does want to use and ultimately glorify each and every one of us in Himself.  We for our part, however, must -- first of all -- want Him to do this with our lives; and then we must learn to listen for His Spirit and respond without delay to His promptings; only in that way can Isaiah's prophecy come to greater fulfilment in us and in our days:

            Nations shall behold your vindication, and all kings your glory.

God can do anything with those who are humble, those who truly seek Him first and foremost in their lives and who are willing to trust Him in all things.  Ask Mary to pray for you; beg the Holy Spirit to guide you; thank God for His goodness to you in Mother Church and in your own personal, living and prayerful relationship with Him.  Do these things and the Holy Spirit will be with you to form you into an ever more close and true likeness of Jesus; let Him thus raise you, and all you may influence, to a closer proximity with Him Who is the Lord and Father of us all.  

Baptism of Our Lord Year C, 2025

 

(Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts of the Apostles 10:34-38; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22) 

Jesus’ decision to leave Mary and His Nazareth home and go to be baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan, occasioned the most sublimely intimate event of Jesus’ life thus far, an event involving the most  Holy Trinity Itself:  the HOLY SPIRIT descended upon Jesus like a dove, and a VOICE came OUT OF HEAVEN saying:

YOU are MY BELOVED SON.

Jesus was then about 30 years of age and had been living under the tutelage of Mary first of all -- as her child, to be guided by her into His Jewish faith and spirituality, and also shown how to live an appropriate social life with its personal relationships.  Only later was He to be taught by Joseph for guidance on how to learn a life-sustaining, trade skill, with himself as a joiner.  Mary and Joseph were thus the chosen guides for Jesus’ growing-up into a perfect Man before His being manifested later as perfect God.

Jesus had always realized spiritually that Joseph was not His father: His ever-growing love for, His intimacy in prayer with, the God of Israel culminated during their twelfth family pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  At the end of that pilgrimage -- during which Jesus had officially accepted a full-grown man’s obligations for His observance of the Law -- their caravan set-off back to Nazareth.  Mary and Joseph, however, could not find Jesus in the caravan with them nor with their friends.  It was only after returning to Jerusalem and searching for three days that Mary and Joseph did eventually find Him in the Temple, where He simply answered Mary’s chastising words by saying, ‘Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?’

However,  even then in the Temple Jesus had only been talking with the learned doctors about God.  But now, after humbly taking up the last position in the queue for John’s baptism, God spoke to Him, as He rose from the waters, with sublime intimacy:

            You are My beloved Son with Whom I am well-pleased!

Now indeed, after 30 years of astounding humility and most patient trust in His ‘distant’ Father, Jesus had become  His Father’s perfect instrument, His Chosen One, to be sent (as the Son ‘proudly’ referred to His mission) as

PERFECT GOD AND PERFECT MAN for mankind’s redemption.

It is, however,  the very moment, the very instant, of Jesus’ baptism, the most joyful, crowning and consecrating, moment of His whole life thus far, which is also the whole point of our celebration in this Mass today.   Jesus was transformed by those divine words still echoing in His mind, and causing His heart to pulsate so serenely and sublimely, yet with such promise of more than human strength.

            You are My beloved Son with Whom I am well-pleased! 

Dear People of God, surely we -- who try to celebrate this Mass in spirit and in truth – must, as disciples of Jesus our friend, our brother, and our Saviour, long to hear such words ourselves on our appearance before the Lord, Maker and Master of all things, Who originally called us to faith in Jesus that He might – by the grace of  His own most Holy Spirit -- make of us guests fit to sit at the table bearing all the blessings for the Father’s heavenly feast, blessings prepared to form us, ultimately, for the eternal praise and glory of the Lord and Father of us all.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we should most whole-heartedly REJOICE with Jesus on this unique day of His supreme delight as Son of Man, here on earth, yet so lovingly  embraced by His heavenly Father and most faithful-abiding Spirit.

Epiphany of The Lord Year C, 2025

 

(Isaiah 60;1-6; Ephesians 3;2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12) 

The Epiphany is a very big feast telling us of some very obscure men … ‘Magi’ sounds to us a bit like magic, but they were really what we might call astrologers, learned men of those ancient times looking to the heavens for guidance in their understanding of worldly facts and divine providence.   How many were they?  Probably three because of the three distinct presents they bore with them for the Child.  They were not ‘kings’ so far as we know, but they were considered to be wise men who knew where to look for important truth, and after noticing a new, wonderful star in the east, they decided to call it the King’s star, and they followed it. 

Their journey led them to the territory of the murderous Herod, then called King of the Jews, who, having interrogated them about the mysterious King’s star, encouraged them on their way asking that they ‘keep in touch’ with him and his men.  The Magi finally arrived at Bethlehem where the star indicated to them their final destination.  They found the Child with Mary His mother, and Joseph her, God-given, guide and protector.

So the great feast of the Epiphany is something of a concoction, commemorating  the manifestation of Christ to the Magi for the Western Church, and the baptism of Christ for the Eastern Church.

The Magi were not God’s spokesmen like the prophets of Israel, they left gifts for the Child, but no words for us; subsequently they simply disappeared into the vagaries of history, and we have no further reason for commemorating them, other than the fact that having followed a heavenly phenomenon, they were the first significant people to have found the infant Christ Whom they ‘worshipped’, as best they knew how.

So what we are really gathered here to celebrate on this great Church  festival is the revelation that: CHRIST CHOSE TO BE INITIALLY MADE MANIFEST, not to the powerful and mighty, but to HUMBLE shepherds and the POOR of Bethany;

He chose to make Himself known to those WILLING TO FOLLOW GOD’S  CALL WHEREVER IT MIGHT LEAD;

to those who REVERENCE MARY, THE MOTHER OF THIS GOD-GIVEN CHILD, and work -- ultimately with blessed JOSEPH -- for the MOTHER AND  CHILD’S, good and well-being.

Surely, dear People of God here at Mass, you can see, that  YOU are potentially included those blessed ones there!!

People of God, let us understand aright the essence of this divine celebration and manifestation which is the Epiphany:

Our God is unique, infinite, and transcendent in His perfections; and yet all His perfections are able to be summed up by these three words of St. John: GOD IS LOVE.  Words which we only we, who believe in Jesus  on earth can appreciate;  because the mutual embrace of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is LIFE ETERNAL, which supports the total grandeur of cosmic creation,  which, above all -- through Jesus born of Mary -- inspires all beautiful human love, spiritual aspirations, heavenly hopes, all Godly experience here on earth, and ultimately, all divine Family expectations thanks to God-given promises.

Divine love alone embraces all that Mother Church teaches, all that the Scriptures contain, and all that the human mind can learn from Jesus and -- under the gift and grace of His most Holy Spirit – all that we can become, for the glory of Him Who is the God and Father of us all.