Saturday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 8, 2025

Mark 6, 30-34

The Apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat. So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place. People saw them leaving and many came to know about it. They hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them. When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass follows the events of Mark 6, 7-13, in which the Lord sent out his Apostles on mission.  Here, we see them return, exhausted, but crowned with success.  They had “preached that men should do penance: and they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (Mark 6, 12-13).  They returned to the Lord at the place he had designated for them and at the time he had appointed, and they “reported all that they had done and taught”.  The Lord approved of their work, and sympathized with their worn out state: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”  The Lord noticed when the people around him were hungry or tired or sick or were running out of wine at their wedding feasts.  He has the eye of a servant intent on his service and on pleasing his master, and he provides aid in due season.  His Apostles are weary and he would take them to a quiet location to eat and sleep.  At the same time, he plans to reveal a fact that will benefit them later when they are preaching in foreign lands.

“People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.”  Mark’s detail here indicates that the Lord had made it easy for the Apostles to find him when their mission was over by telling them to come to a popular place: a crossroads or a marketplace in one of the Galilean towns.  After they had excitedly told Jesus how they had fared in their travels, the Lord and they “went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.”  The Greek text says “the boat”, as opposed to “a boat”, which suggests Jesus and the Apostles met up at Capernaum where Peter still kept his fishing boat.  The Lord seemed to want to offer them a break of some days in this “deserted place”, or it would hardly be worthwhile to go to all the trouble of getting there.  First, they would have stocked up on their provisions in the town, and then headed out.

However, “People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.”  Jesus lay low during the time his Apostles had been away, keeping mostly to himself, perhaps spending his time in the wild country around the city where he preferred to pray.  Now that the Apostles had returned and Jesus was publicly meeting them, it would have appeared that he would resume preaching and healing.  Many in Capernaum would have gone off to apprise their friends and relatives in the nearby towns of this so that they could come and listen and be healed of their afflictions.  When the people saw the Lord and his Apostles get into their boat and head out, they worked out about where they would go, and “hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them.”  Possibly people had heard the Lord or the Apostles talking.  They might have seen the direction the boat was taking and deduced their destination accordingly.  The place mighty already have been known as a place the Lord used as a retreat.  The deserted place must not have been very far from Capernaum.  But what are we to make of the fact that the people “arrived at the place before them”?  Certainly this speaks to the people’s need for him, whether to hear the word of God or to be freed of demonic possession or some illness or other condition.  It also highlights a certain recklessness, in that the people did not know for sure that he was going to this or that place, and they might wind up running all over the countryside looking for him.  Now, working people cannot just close up shop and chase up and down a seacoast looking for someone.  Laborers cannot just quit their fields.  That many did just this tells us that Jesus offered them hope for a better life, not merely free from the taxes the Romans or Herod demanded, but a life of spiritual peace and of a heavenly destiny.  

“When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them.”  Here again, we witness the Lord Jesus who looks into the hearts of people.  He sees what is there, that “they were like sheep without a shepherd”, awaiting the One who alone could lead them to safe and abundant pastures.  And, again, he offers his service: “He began to teach them many things.”  

When the Apostles saw the crowds, their hearts must have sunk, because their chance of a needed holiday was gone.  They saw their Master go right back to work as soon as he left the boat.  Maybe it was only years later that they understood what else they had seen: that for the servant of God, there is no real rest on this earth.  The servant of God continuously prays and worships, and is alert for opportunities to spread the Gospel.  This servant is never “off the clock” until the Lord tells him to come on home.  We do not see the Apostles grumbling, nor do we hear the Lord making excuses.  They pick up their burden of ministry and carry on.

Friday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 7, 2025

Hebrews 13, 1-8

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels. Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment, and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you also are in the body. Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers. Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never forsake you or abandon you. Thus we may say with confidence: “The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”  Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

At the end of his Letter to the Hebrews, the author urges certain actions, but just as importantly, he urges an attitude, a habitual way of thinking that informs and guides a person’s thoughts and behavior.  He provides a sort of heading for this section: “Let brotherly love continue.”  He uses this device in his other letters in order to talk more specifically about the duties of Christians according to their various states in life.  Here, he speaks more of the duties of the Christian towards others who may even be strangers.  He says, “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”  He has in mind Abraham and Tobias, but also those who entertained the Apostles and the Lord himself.  These words are a gentle and clever reminder that other people, especially other Christians, may very well be messengers from God, whether they are aware of it or not.  We should receive them as though they were doing us a favor, and ponder what message God may be sending us through them.  Perhaps it is a very simple one.

“Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment, and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you also are in the body.”  These to be remembered are suffering for Christ and are chained in prisons or are being shunned and have had their property confiscated.  To “be mindful” of them means more than to think about them once in a while, but to seek them out, if possible, and to assist them in practical ways.  This brings to mind the words of St. James: “And if a brother or sister be naked and want daily food: and one of you say to them: Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that are necessary for the body, what shall it profit? So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself” (James 2, 15-17).  And we do this not merely because we have beliefs in common with certain others but because we are fellow members in the Body of Christ.

“Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers.”  The sacred author refers here to the teaching of Christ on divorce and remarriage, and on the doctrine of marriage as a state which God himself blesses.  It is a union which serves to remind us all of the union of the soul with God.  “Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have.”  Sages and philosophers from the times of the Greeks till now urge simplicity in life, but the Lord teaches that we should embrace this for the sake of preaching his Gospel and also in order to live it.  The more things we have, the more we have to worry about.  And the more we have, the more we want.  Overindulgence in possessions leads to the attitude that we can take care of ourselves, and this leads to atheism.  On the other hand, the practice of simplicity and self-denial leads us to experience the truth of, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”  

“Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you.”  The author is thinking here of St. James, the son of Zebedee, whom Herod killed, and St. Stephen, in whose martyrdom he himself took part, as well as others of the faithful who were hunted down and killed in the first persecution of the Christians by the Jewish authorities.  “Remember them”, that is, again, not merely think of them from time to time, but keep them in mind.  “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.”  Consider how Stephen received a vision as he was being stoned and saw heaven open to him, and how so many others died for Christ, persevering heroically in their torments.  We who live in these later times have thousands of saints to emulate. 

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”  His faithfulness to us never changes.  We should never vacillate in our faith in him.  

Thursday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 6, 2025

Mark 6, 7-13

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick –no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Earlier in his Gospel, St. Mark showed how the Lord Jesus exercised authority over sicknesses, infirmities, storms, and demons. He possesses this authority in himself and it does not come from the Jewish rulers.  As a Galilean, the leadership in Jerusalem sees him and treats him as an outsider, yet he is the one with true power and wisdom — with true authority that has been approved by the Father at his baptism in the Jordan.  In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, we see him bestowing authority on his own to his Apostles.  At the same time, he purposely did not confer the usual trappings of authority on them.  While having greater power than any humans had ever possessed — over unclean spirits, no less — they were to take “nothing for the journey but a walking stick”.  Traveling distances without the normal provisions of food and water, they would arrive at their destinations as refugees fleeing an army, or as those who had escaped from robbers.  They would not resemble the envoys of the Messiah.  They would seem weak.  And this was the point, for as St. Paul would write how the Lord answered his prayer to take away his infirmity, saying, “My grace is sufficient for you: for power is made perfect in infirmity.” Paul then reflected, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful” (2 Corinthians 9-10).  The Lord shows his power through the weak in order to make it clear that it is his power performing the works, and that his chosen ones are but the instruments, conveyors, of it.  And there is joy in being his instruments.  

“They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic.”  The Apostles are granted sandals, which are necessary for crossing stretches of the wilderness and walking in towns, and also to make it clear that they were not runaway slaves, for slaves did not wear sandals.  On the other hand, they were to wear no second tunic.  This would be the equivalent of a modern tee shirt.  They were dressed in such a way as to match the clothing of the lowest, poorest person they were likely to meet.  This must have been a humbling experience for men like Peter, who owned his own house and boat, and for Matthew, the formerly rich tax collector.  Attired in this way, they could in no way set themselves up as anyone important, since this would result in ridicule, and so they could speak only of Jesus.  This may remind us of how the Lord told them, at another time, “But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak: for it is not you that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaks in you” (Matthew 10, 19-20).  Their persecutors would be confounded by an eloquence that could not have come from them.

“Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there.”  The Lord did not want it to seem that they were preaching for money, as others did.  Nor did he want them to temper their preaching so as not to offend anyone.  They were not in a town for their own purposes but for the Lord’s.  This order would serve to keep the Apostles on task, and also bolster their credibility in the eyes of the townspeople.  “Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.”  That is, do not merely walk away from the place to try your luck somewhere else.  They were heralds of the King, and to reject them was to reject him.  We see how these towns would be treated by the example of the king in the parable of the king who prepared a wedding feast for his son: the king sent out his messengers to invite the guests, but the guests rejected them and even killed some.  As a result,  “when the king had heard of it, he was angry: and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city” (Matthew 22, 7).  And, “It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment” than for them (Matthew 11, 24).

“So they went off and preached repentance.”  The hardest thing to preach, and the most necessary, is repentance.  The people who stop to listen think the preacher is speaking to someone else.  The Apostles, though, could back up their words with powerful deeds: they “drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”  Acting in the Lord’s name, he acted through their words and hands.  

We know ourselves best in silence and in the simplest possible living, and in knowing ourselves, we gain true humility.  In true humility, which enables us to be obedient to God’s commands, he will work through our words and hands as well.

Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 5, 2025

Hebrews 12, 4-7; 11-15

Brothers and sisters: In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. You have also forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children: My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.  Endure your trials as discipline; God treats you as his sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled.

In the First Reading of today’s Mass, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews has written persuasively that the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem should cease to see themselves as Jews who ought to worship at the Temple and observe the Mosaic Law and to understand that they are Christians, the people of the New Covenant made by the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the true High Priest.  Now, at the end of his Letter, he addresses the people more personally.  He knows that they are suffering trials, including persecution, and he teaches them the meaning of their sufferings.

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.”  This may refer to a persecution which has not yet turned murderous.  If the Letter is indeed meant for the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, that may help set the year for its composition in the 50’s or 60’s A.D., so that the memories of the stoning of St. Stephen and the beheading of St. James are starting to fade a bit.  We can also understand this as the struggle each of us faces in overcoming daily temptations. 

“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him.”  The author quotes Proverbs 3, 11.  “For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.”  Almighty God does not send affliction upon anyone but does withhold his undeserved protection from us for various reasons.  For the believer, this ought to lead to growth in faith and the virtues — it is not punishment for sin.  This growth in virtue is not meant for its own sake, but so that we might be conformed to his Son.  The trials that come to us do not cause us to rejoice when we receive them and may indeed bring sorrow, but in the end, if we persevere through them, there shall be everlasting peace.  As we read in Psalm 126, 5–7: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.  Going they went and wept, casting their seeds.  But coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves.”

“So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.”  The “drooping hands” of a lack of good works and the weak knees of  a lack of prayer.

“That holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”  We are to “strive” for this.  Baptism and grace make this holiness possible but we must cooperate with the grace.  We are like people who are physically sound but who must train hard if they are to complete marathons.

“See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God.”  We ought to assist one another, particularly family members, in our striving for holiness.  And we must grow in holiness for if it does not grow it will wither away through the “bitter root” of temptation and sin.

Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 4, 2025

Mark 5:21–43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?” But his disciples said to Jesus, “You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”  While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. At that they were utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said that she should be given something to eat.

“My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.”  The girl had become sick while the Lord was visiting the region of the Decapolis, across the sea.  By the time that Jesus returned, she was deathly ill and her father, a leader of the town’s synagogue, was looking for him.  Searching for him, he would have been told that Jesus was away with his disciples and that it was not known when he would return.  We can imagine that the man sent servants into the town to watch for Jesus, but as his daughter’s condition worsened and his desperation grew, he ran through the town himself, looking for the Lord.  When he saw the him, he threw himself at his feet and begged him to lay his hands on his daughter, that she might live.  The official is very specific in asking Jesus to lay his hands on her, as though he thought that the Lord’s healing power could only transfer into her body in this way.  Along the road, a woman afflicted with a chronic sickness that featured a flow of blood, saw the Lord passing by, and she took a chance: “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”  She did not dare approach the Lord openly: he would certainly refuse to lay his hands on a woman whose condition would render him unclean.  But in her own desperation she forced her way through the crowd and just managed to touch his mantle as he walked.  At that point, the Lord stopped and turned around.  “Who has touched my clothes?”  Mark tells us that Jesus was aware that “power had gone out from him”, an interesting way to put it.  The woman then admitted what she had done, but rather than reject her, the Lord commended her faith and confirmed her healing.

“Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?”  The coldness of the people from Jairus’s house is very striking.  The Greek tense of the word translated here as “has died” is better rendered as “she died”, as in, “Your daughter died.”  The perfect tense, used in the lectionary translation, makes it sound as if the girl has just now died.  But the Greek tense does not.  She “died” sometime in the past.  This allows us to wonder if Jairus knew his daughter was dead when he found Jesus and was hoping against hope that the Lord could still somehow save her — but certainly he would not lay his hands on her if he knew she was dead, for this would render him unclean.  The Lord reassures Jairus that he will do as he asks: “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.”  In the house, he took the girl’s cold hand in his and spoke to her in Aramaic, “Talitha, koum.”  Literally, Little girl, arise.  

In both the case of the woman and of the girl, there is the apparent danger of the Lord being rendered unclean, but he does not even hint that this means anything to him.  Particularly in the case of the woman, he shows his awareness of power “going out”, but not of having become unclean.  St. Mark shows us here that the Lord came for the “unclean”, for sinners, even for those dead in sin.  He touches our impurity and makes us pure.  It comes at a mysterious cost for him — power “goes out of him” — but it is one which he willingly accepts.  We also see here that the Lord has such power that those who touch him are cured as well as those whom he touches.  This signifies the greatness of his will to save us.

 Monday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, February 3, 2025

Mark 5, 1-20

Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear. Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But Jesus would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.” Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.

This episode with the Gerasene demoniac follows directly after that of Jesus calming the storm.  We can see in this that the Lord Jesus prepared his Apostles for the even more terrifying experience of facing Legion by showing them his power over the nearly disastrous squall.  We could also see this as the demons, aware of the approach of the Lord over the sea, attempting to scare him and drive him off, if not kill him, by causing this storm.  The Lord, then, wards off this attack, then heads directly for his enemies.  “At once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him.”  The demons, having failed with the storm, now attempt to thwart the Lord with the hideous appearance of the man whom they have seized, as though to warn Jesus that he will wind up even as that man: “Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.”  No monster portrayed in our movies approaches this man in his horrible aspect.  “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!”  The devil often appeals to humans that he is the wronged party in his struggle with God, that he is an underdog worthy of sympathy.  He does this during modern exorcisms, and he does it in our society, attempting to make us normalize, accept, and celebrate that which should not be.  Here he tries to disguise himself as a lowly creature whom no one, let alone  “the Son of the Most High God”, should deign to notice.  Almost comically, the demon hides behind the man whose life he has torn apart, as though he and the man were one and the same.

“He asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ”  Jesus ignores the evil one’s entreaty and commands it to give its name, thereby forcing its surrender.  He does this for the sake of the Apostles, who are watching nearby, stiff and pale.  He is teaching them about his authority and power.  Ultimately this will help them to understand how easily he could have escaped his Death on the Cross if he had chosen to do this, and to see his Passion and Death as a true, voluntary Sacrifice.  Its answer, “Legion”, does not necessarily imply that six thousand demons inhabited this man.  It might have meant even more.  “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.”  Anything is preferable to a demon than to return to hell after being expelled from a man.  Its fellow demons jeer and mock with great ferocity.  It would have been worse for Legion because not even it as an immense mob of spirits could hold onto a single man, driven out by a single man with a simple command.  The Lord allows them to enter the vast herd of swine feeding on the hillside.  This took place early in the day, since the Lord and the Apostles had crossed the Sea of Galilee that evening.  The weather was calm.  A few clouds might have dotted the sky, but it was mostly clear following the squall.  And then, without warning, the man fell to the ground, unconscious, and the swine howled and stampeded.  Now, a pig can squeal as loudly as a hundred decibels or more.  Mark tells us there were two thousand pigs in the herd.  The high pitched sounds of the shrieks of the pigs, even from a distance, would have been shattering.  The ground, too, would have shook as they pounded their way desperately for the cliff.  Not even a pig wanted to be home for a demon.

And then it was over, and a sweet quiet reigned until a crowd from the nearby town came up.  The formerly possessed man was “sitting there clothed and in his right mind.”  Perhaps one of the Apostles threw a blanket or his mantle over him.  The man looked about him in wonderment, untroubled for the first time in a very long time.  He did not know all that had happened.  He was bruised, gashed, and bleeding, but his mind was “right”.  It was “right” enough for him to ask the Lord if he could go with him.  But the Lord wanted him to stay, to witness to the Gentiles of the region what the God of the Jews had done for him, a Gentile.  And in this way prepare the land for the preaching of the Apostles after Pentecost.

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Sunday, February 2, 2021

Luke 2, 22–32

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph took Jesus 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, and to offer the sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.  Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.”

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord comes forty days after Christmas, as the Jewish Law prescribed that the first-born son be presented in the Temple forty days after his birth.  The event is significant for Christians because it marks the first time the Lord comes to the Temple built for his honor and worship.  He comes this time as a tiny Baby carried by his Mother.  He will enter it for the last time in triumph and to the cries of “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord”.  It is also on this occasion that he is revealed as the One who is both “light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel”.  Simeon here announces Jesus of Nazareth as the long-awaited Messiah, the “salvation” of the Jews, and at the same time he tells that he will be the Messiah, as it were, for the Gentiles.  This would certainly have startled the priests and people within hearing.  The Messiah was supposed by them to lead only the Jews, and to fight against and conquer the Gentiles.  His mission, in fact, consisted primarily in this.  The Gentiles did not need “a light for revelation”.  They needed a king who would “rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Psalm 2, 9).  

The sign of the Temple is fulfilled by the reality of the Holy Church which Christ himself founded.  One day he will return in glory to the Church on earth.  At that time, the Church, in all its members, shall cry out as Simeon did, “My eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples.”  He will bring his Church, formed of Jews and Gentiles, into the “peace” of his Kingdom, while he will “break in pieces” the wicked.  Simeon persevered into old age as he awaited the coming of the Lord.  We too are called to persevere in awaiting his coming.  The Church has now waited more than two thousand years, and each day brings his coming nearer.  We can also understand the long wait as the Lord extending the time which he gives us to convert the people of the world.  Let us work and pray to this end.