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The one who goes in the way which Christ has gone, Is much more sure to meet with him, than oneWho travels by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far ahead, May turn and take me by the hand, And more: May banish my decays.

Fr. Henry O’Shea: No matter what we read, whether it be a novel, an article in a newspaper or online, a poem, a catalogue, a school text-book, we always bring our personal baggage and our hang-ups, to that reading. We bring the baggage of our own prejudices, of our own preconceptions, of our understandings and misunderstandings and the baggage of our expectations. The same can be said about what we choose to call up and watch and listen to on our smartphones, iPads, or whatever media we happen to be hooked on. 

The Bible, Sacred Scrupture, is no exception to this rule of bringing our baggage. We can read the Bible simply as literature. We can read it for personal instruction or spiritual benefit. As with any book, we can start on page one with the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament and read right through to the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. And as we read, we discover that the Bible is made up of writings of many different types, from history to law-making to religious preaching, poetry and much more.

In the liturgy of the Mass, we use a book called the Lectionary.  This is a selection of readings from the Old and New Testaments interspersed with chants, nearly always from the Psalms, which are a book of 150 songs or poems from the Old Testament. Then there are verses used as acclamations such as, for example, those before the Gospel. 

In compiling the Lectionary and offering it to us, the Church approaches the text with its own baggage, as we mentioned above. At Mass, the texts we read are always chosen in order to be in some way related to the mystery of Christ. 

Here, the word mystery does not mean a detective mystery or something we cannot understand. Here, mystery means a showing or presentation of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And, from that showing, there necessarily follow the effects on us and the demands made on us by this life, death and resurrection. As with any text, there is always a danger that speaking about the liturgical readings can become a literary or scholarly exercise, a playing with words, or a forced effort to squeeze some practical moral message out of them. We can lose sight of the fact that in all the readings, it is Jesus, himself the Word of God in flesh and bone, who is speaking the words of life, the words of his life and our lives, to us.

Today’s readings for the first Sunday in Lent are typical of this linking of all three readings to Christ. In one way or another, they deal with time, with history, with life, with death, with faith. And they deal with all of these as seen through the lens or prism of the mystery of Christ. They deal with the past, with the present and with the future.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, having been baptised in the Jordan, spends forty days in the desert and then, briefly on the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem, being tempted by Satan.  Jesus is being prepared for entry into the land of his mission. That is, Jesus is being prepared for his proclamation of the good news from God. Jesus is being prepared for a journey that will end up with his Crucifixion and Resurrection.

 It is as if Jesus is repeating the wanderings of the people of Israel for forty years in the desert before they entered the promised land. Today’s first reading, from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, gives a short summary of this journey, a journey here recalled in a context of liturgical, cultic or worshipping thanksgiving for its reality and for its outcome. 

During the forty days of preparation, Jesus is presented as rejecting all the allures, all the seductions of earthly power – even of psychic-magical power. He refuses to turn stones into bread saying, ‘People do not live on bread alone’. He asserts that there is more to life than temporary gratification of physical and psychological needs. He asserts that there is more to life than owning and controlling billions of dollars, euros, yens, yuans or pounds and the political hard power that these can buy. Jesus makes it clear that there is more to life than power to dominate and power to exploit earthly kingdoms, to establish colonies of all kinds, including colonies in our minds. If we need any proof of the dangers and disasters of such a mind-set, we need only look at what is happening all over the world as we speak. 

Today we are invited to set out, accompanied by Jesus and in the company of our tribe of sisters and brothers, on our own forty-day journey to the reality of Easter. Now, we are marching as the new Israel, the new universal people of God. We call this journey Lent, which is an old Anglo-Saxon word for the season of Spring, an idea that contains its own promise. In Latin and in many other languages the season is simply known as the Forty Days.  

Today’s second reading, from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, pulls all three readings of the Mass together. St Paul explains that in Jesus all of our journeys are given a meaning, given a past, given a present and given a future. St Paul tells us that all of us are and can be saved – if we accept and welcome Christ’s invitation and confess with our lips and believe in our hearts – that is, believe in the very core of our being –  if we believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. And in doing so God raised, raises and will raise us, potentially and really, with Christ. 

Of course, at some stage in our physical, bodily, lives, we die and it is foolish to deny this, but believing in our hearts, and proclaiming with our lips, that Jesus is Lord, we enter into the pledge of eternal life. This is a pledge that is made good in the resurrection of that same Jesus, the  Christ. 

But this is not magic, not a conjuring-trick. This is not an automatic, mechanical, exercise. This is not a mere box-ticking of a catalogue of our ascetical and spiritual gymnastics or a list of our good deeds, of givings-up, givings-in and givings-over. 

Our hearts and minds need to participate fully, to expand during the forty years of the Chosen People’s wanderings which can serve an image of our earthly lives. We need consciously to make our own the new life offered and made possible for us at and by our Baptism. This involves right belief and right behaviour. It involves discovering our real, redeemed, selves. It involves setting out at once on the forty-day journey – or the many forty-day journeys – to which Jesus invites us when he tells us in today’s Gospel, ‘You must worship the Lord you God and serve him alone.’               

Yet Lord instruct me to improve my fast. By starving sin and taking such repast, As may my faults control: That I may revel at my door, Not in my parlour, but banqueting the poor. And among those poor, my soul.

 

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Fr. Anthony Keane. In today’s Gospel from Luke chapter 6, dearest Brothers and Sisters, we see Our Loving Lord  trying to teach us the ineffable way of Life in a series of sketches and brush strokes with a speed and vitality which matches the urgency of the task.

For Christ is the Wisdom of creation, Logos and Sophia,  quicker to move than any motion, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty, mirror of God’s active power and image of His goodness.  She is unchanging, she renews the world, and, generation after generation, passing into holy souls, makes them into God’s friends and prophets.

The time is indeed short: let us not waste it then with misery and servility.  For we are stars.  Let us then allow that divinity within us shine out with that joy we were made with at the beginning of our creation. By God’s grace let us allow the joy of our God-given, elementary, lapidary  existence shine. By God’s grace we are stars.     It is of us that the prophet Baruch speaks:                                                God sends the light and it goes, He recalls it and trembling it obeys,  the stars shine joyfully at their posts; when He calls them they answer ‘Here we are’;  they shine to delight their Creator.

We live in a time when the whole world is beginning to understand that our lives will have to be ‘at all times Lenten in character’ if we are to survive as a planet. There is a climate crisis which could destroy our world and a purification of the ecosystem is required, something like the traditional way of unclogging our spiritual ecosystem by prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Since large-scale industrialization began around a century and a half ago, the levels of greenhouse gases have increased so that there is now an asphyxiating glut of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Our oversupply of such emissions is creating a hole in the delicate mantilla which presently shades us from the sun, and we are wrecking the greenhouse which allows us to survive. We have become ‘oilaholics’ and the disease is contagious. Our addiction threatens to destroy the roof over our heads, so a programme of ecological transformation is needed fast.

Our spiritual ecosystem was routinely purified by prayer, fasting and almsgiving. These were the three-pronged approaches to Lent. Prayer puts us in touch with the ultimate source of divine energy in our lives, the Holy Spirit, breathing in our hearts; fasting allowed us to cut down on external energy consumption, to concentrate on being rather than having. It’s different for each one of us, and should mean giving up whatever is debilitating and switching to the alternative energy which will raise us from the dead.

Almsgiving provides an outlet for this newly sourced energy, allowing it to radiate into the atmosphere around us. Almsgiving is being generous as God is generous. And if you are guilt-ridden or spendthrift; if your weakness is not being able to say no to anyone, then your godlike generosity is to develop the backbone which can resist those grasping tentacles, cut off the prying tendrils and tell the creepy-crawlies to get lost. Lent is a time for getting rid of at least some of the crazy-makers in your life, those whom you allow to enslave you, importune you, take you for granted, bully you. Those who push you around, keep you under their thumb, act as travel agent for your guilt trips. Resurrection is not about being feak and weeble, an inexhaustible wimp, a pushover when it comes to those looking for a hand-out.

Too often the emphasis has been on mortification as an end in itself. Or it has come across as a rejection of the body, of the passions, of the sap of life, as if these were antipathetic to true Christian living. Asceticism is not a punitive discipline but rather like learning how to play a musical instrument or training ourselves in a worthwhile craft. It should not be miserable exercise of the will over a reluctant and frightened part of myself. Lent is about doing to death, mortifying, at least some of the things that prevent us from being. It is about renouncing at least one thing that weighs me down, holds me back and prevents me from rising from the dead. It is not a macho manifesto of the mind over the body. Christianity is not about self-conquest, it is about self-surrender. Surrender of the total person, body and soul, to the guidance of the Spirit.

Lent is the runway towards Easter, preparation for the fullest kind of life: its sign is joy, its source is love. It should make us more ready, more fit, more willing, more in shape, to rise with Christ from the tomb at Eastertide to be alive with him forever. As the poet Rilke says, ‘we shall have been marvellously prepared for divine relationship.’ In the end, this divine connection must surely transform us and our connection to one another and the world around.

Mark Patrick Hederman OSB

Fr. John O’Callagahan. “Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you! Pray for them, be compassionate, as your Father is compassionate!” This is counter-cultural to say the least and questionnably possible at all, especially when the wrongs go on and on, or where there is deep injustice.  We can all think of examples, harrowing ones that we mightn’t even want to name. It is these injustices, and the suffering they entail, which are the topic of Jesus’ words today. 

There is a variety of possible responses, from ‘burying the anger’ and perhaps letting it seethe under the surface of our lives; to retaliating in a more or less thought out fashion; to at least in some cases reporting it to the police; not a bad option, as it might at least prevent other people from getting hurt. But what do these responses produce? Among other things more human fall-out, private humiliations going public, a cycle of retaliation, perhaps even prison. It might deliver what some people want: revenge, a certain pleasure in seeing the offender suffer. 

In the Old Testament, in the story of Adam and Eve, the eldest son Cain killed his brother Abel; then further down the family tree, the young Lamech declared, and I quote, ‘sevenfold vengeance for Cain, but seventy times seven for Lamech!’ Things went, literally, to hell! With time the Old Testament prophets would try and limit the ever expanding circle of violence and reduce it to a simple tit-for-tat retaliation: ‘you take my eye out, I’ll take one of yours out, only one!’. It was rough justice but at least it didn’t increase the damage by, for instance, a multiple of seven. 

When Christ came he turned the practice of retribution on its head and called us to forgive, seventy times seven times. He came to bring something much more than retaliation,  and more than judgement, something that replaces the impotence of legalism. 

In the Our Father he explicitly taught us to pray ‘forgive us this day our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Let us be careful to understand this properly: it is not because I forgive people who have offended me that God forgives me. No, it is because God forgives me my offences, and freely establishes and restores my relationship with him, that I in my turn can forgive others. The more we recognise our own faults and offences the easier it is to forgive others. It is when we recognise ourselves as in daily receipt of God’s love (in whatever form) that we are able, impelled and even relieved, to forgive others. We ‘pass on’ the generosity we receive, even seventy times seven times. 

It seems to me that forgiveness is a special gift of Christians to the world. The reality of ‘perpetual retribution’ is not restricted to ancient times; hell can be found today in places where there is no forgiveness. And neither Jews nor  Muslims preach that God is love nor demand such a practice of forgiveness among themselves. But Christians are called to overcome revenge with forgiveness, by passing on the love we receive from God. It may be easier to relate to each other simply in terms of rights and duties, keeping up a steady equilibrium, calculated friendship, but that is not the Christian way.  Let anyone who goes against love and forgiveness, against Christian compassion, not dare to say that he or she has been born of God. And by forgiveness we can also show the world something true about God, and to what dignity he has called us. For this let us pray for the help of the Holy Spirit!

 

Fr. Simon Sleeman.  They say, writing a sermon is like building a chicken coop in a high wind – you grab any flying board and nail it down… quick. This week I grabbed a few boards.

The first – from Mass last Sunday – where we prayed that, “our lives would joyfully bear fruit”. That was the last prayer we said before leaving the church.  Our lives bearing fruit – joyfully. I wondered at that  – still bearing fruit when we are old, still full of sap still green. A possibility.

The prophet Jeremiah, the second board, told me how I might do that – live fruitfully, joyfully but also how I might fail.Jeremiah was a big man, he centres an epoch – that big – he was outspoken, fearless – poor, he mourned (he was the weeping prophet) he was hated, a walking beatitude, he never flinched from setting the human agenda – a life well lived, bearing fruit.

‘Cursed are those’ he barks,  ‘who trust in humans’, who think they can make it on their own – gratifying their every desire.This cursing wasn’t mere profanity – cursing the car that won’t start or the person who cut in front of you – cursing was noble, religious, powered speech. The cursed…rootless, tumbleweed in the desert, blown around by every whim or breeze, fad or fashion. Fruitless.

A few years, wandering on our own, blown about in the desert, a few years of affluence and abundance – anxiety flares, depression soars, suicides…rootless, joyless, fruitless..Rootless… I accumulate – just one click, just one clip, just one sip  – another…. pair of shoes, another book – so much paraphernalia needed to anchor me. The serpent cursed, crawling on its belly.

Jeremiah  mellows and says… aloud … ‘Blessed’ are those who trust in God – again blessing, like cursing, wasn’t just some form of gentle encouragement – the blessed, were strong trees, deep rooted – fruit bearing.

Jeremiah rings out in our ears this morning and Jesus too, telling us, we can climb out of the ocean of self, onto dry ground, put down roots and bear fruit.   

‘Don’t wander off’  they plead, opting to live in the ocean of self, worshipping the idols your culture wants you to do, nay, needs you to do. If you do,  you will soon fatigue and need artificial aids to keep afloat- pieces of drift wood, life jackets.

Can we still ourselves and hear their urgent, now seemingly long distance call, amidst the noise, the bustle, the news. As we count and compile – our spirits shrivel – Jeremiah calls, cries, clamours –  turn, repent. Turn to the truth. Trust in God, that is the truth.

There is more than the our survival at risk here; the survival of our planet is at stake, the world hanging by a thread, for the ‘cursed’ endanger the world’s health and its sanity.

So rootage is what I am after – rootage as I pray, rootage as I work, shop, change a tyre, rootage as I get sick, have surgery and convalesce, rootage as I accumulate birthdays and anniversaries. God the great continent of reality in which I live and to whom I must answer.  It is with God we must deal if we are to become human, living fruitful joy-filled lives.

Rooted in God, in Christ, I rise from the dead – Rooted in Christ, ‘I put down roots and I put out leaves’. Amen

Fr. Luke MacNamara. Today we commemorate St Brigid, one of Ireland’s three principal patrons. Here in Munster, our St Ita, is often called the Brigid of Munster, which is an invitation to compare these two women. 

Brigid came from Faughan in Louth and founded a monastery, at Kildare. Ita came from Waterford and founded her monastery at Killeedy. When the King of Leinster refused to give Brigid land for her monastery, she asked for as much as her cloak would cover, and the king agreed. When Brigid lay down the cloak 4 sisters each took a corner and ran, with the cloak extending in every direction to cover all of Leinster. The king then agreed to give her the best land in Kildare. Somewhat differently, the King of Munster offered Ita all the best land in Limerick but she would only accept four acres by a small river at Kileedy.

The prayer of both Brigid and Ita was profoundly Trinitarian. They repeatedly invoked the Trinity in their daily prayers and especially when difficult situations arose. The prayer of St Paul in the letter to the Ephesians, they would have made their own: 

“This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father: May the Father give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, until, knowing the love of Christ, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.” 

The life of both women is drawn into the mutual love of the Trinity. The knowledge and daily experience of God’s love is the bedrock of their vocation. Strengthened by that love they become like Christ, and devote their whole lives in prayer to the Father and service to many. Their biographies contain tales of mysterious fires which attest to the presence of the Spirit in their monastic life and service.

Both exhibited the generous and selfless love of which Jesus speaks in the sermon on the plain. They showed greatest generosity to those unable to repay them, the destitute, the poor and those on the margins of Gaelic society. Brigid gave away her mother’s butter, her family’s property, her father’s sword and Ita’s monastery fed the neighbouring people in times of famine. 

Both embodied the compassion of the heavenly Father. Both had sisters who failed in their vows of chastity and yet they pardoned and readmitted them even at the risk of scandal. They both embodied the command of Jesus, “Be merciful as the Father is merciful”.

Much is made today of the prominence of Brigid, her authority as Abbess, the reach of her influence. What is most remembered in the lives of both Brigid and Ita is how, at personal risk and cost, they fearlessly exercised the Lord’s commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”. Power and influence decline and fall. True selfless love endures forever. These two women, one who we commemorate today and Ita who we commemorated only 2 weeks ago, are models of this selfless and fearless love that knows no cost and that is nourished through a life of Trinitarian prayer. This is their truest and enduring legacy to us. May these brave mothers of the Gael inspire us to love and to pray, and may they also intercede and watch over us and all the new Irish who come to live among us.

Fr. Lino Moreira According to the Law of Moses, if a woman gave birth to a child she became unclean on account of her bleeding. If the child was a boy she was excluded from taking part in worship for forty days (cf. Lv 12:1-4), at the end of which sacrifices of atonement had to be offered (cf. Lv 12:6-7). Saint Luke relates that for her purification after the birth of Jesus, Mary availed herself of a concession made to the poor and offered only ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’ (Lk 2:24, cf. Lv 12:8). 

The evangelist also quotes another law namely: ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated holy to the Lord’ (Lk 2:23, cf. Ex 13:2). But, surprisingly, instead of mentioning that Mary and Joseph paid the prescribed five shekels for the redemption of their firstborn (cf. Nb 3:46-48; 18:15-16) he writes: they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (Lk 2:22). This means that, in the temple at Jerusalem, the place where God met his people, Jesus was offered to his heavenly Father. He was not redeemed and restored to his earthly parents, but rather he was completely given over to God, to whom he unreservedly belonged. And in this way, the oracle of the prophet Malachi was fulfilled: ‘Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come’ (Ml 3:1).

When Jesus – the Lord Christ (cf. Lk 2:26) – entered the temple for the first time, he was greeted by Simeon and Anna as representatives of faithful Israel. Filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, Simeon praised God, saying: ‘Now, Lord, you are letting your servant go in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples; a light of revelation for the gentiles and glory for your people Israel’ (Lk 2:29-32). 

In these verses, sung daily by the Church at night prayer, Jesus is identified with the mysterious figure of the Suffering Servant, whom the prophet Isaiah calls a light to the nations (cf. Is 42:6; 49:6). Indeed, the son of Mary and Joseph was chosen from all eternity to bring the light of God to the Gentiles and to fulfil the promise that the Lord had made to his chosen people in the days of their exile: ‘I will grant salvation to Zion, to Israel my glory’ (Is 46:13). But in order to carry out his universal mission as God’s Servant, and gather Jews and Gentiles alike into a single people of descendants of Abraham by faith, Jesus had to be made perfect through suffering (cf. Hb 2:10) and offer his own life on the cross as a sacrifice of atonement for sins (cf. Hb 2:17; Is 53:10).

Simeon did not elaborate on this last point, but he hinted at the reality of the cross when he said to Mary, the mother of Jesus: ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too’ (Lk 2:34-35).

All through his earthly life Jesus had to face the antagonism of those who did not recognise him as the Messiah. Such relentless opposition culminated in his death on the cross, whereby he became the clearest sign of God’s love for the entire creation. That sign can never be blotted out or destroyed, but it will continue to be opposed, contradicted and even despised throughout the centuries. The light of God’s love shining from the cross is so radically at odds with human self-love that many perceive it as the greatest obstacle to their happiness and prosperity. And yet it is only by looking at the cross of Christ that we can uncover the mysteries of God’s wisdom, and that we can learn to imitate God’s love for the work of his hands. We were created in God’s image and likeness, and we can only be truly ourselves and live to the full if we become love as God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16).

This week the monastic community remembers Father Columba Breen OSB on the 25th anniversary of his death.

Born in Dublin on 18^th October 1917, Frederick Thomas McDonagh Breen attended the Christian Brothers School in Marino, Dublin, and St Flannan’s College in Ennis before entering the Dublin Archdiocesan Seminary in Clonliffe College.

While there, he read classics and philosophy in University College Dublin, graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1938. Following a year of theology at the Lateran University in Rome, during which time he became familiar with Benedictines at Sant’Anselmo, he entered Glenstal on 22^nd October 1939.

After a shortened postulancy, he entered the novitiate on 14^th January 1940, receiving the name Columba. He made profession on 18^th February 1941 and was ordained priest on 18^th December 1945. Recovering from an illness, he spent the months of February to September of 1946 convalescing in our motherhouse of Maredsous Abbey in Belgium.

Father Columba taught French, Irish and religion in the school and, already devoted to the study of Scripture, taught this discipline in the monastery. In September 1948 he became Headmaster, a post he held until 1953.  In 1957 he went to the École Biblique in Jerusalem, obtaining a Diploma in Biblical Studies in 1959. At that time, the Dominican-run institute was at the height of its influence and Father Columba made many friends and future contacts there, the most important for him being Père Pierre Benoit OP. It was from this time, too, that his interest in yoga stemmed, encouraged by Père Jean-Marie Déchanet OSB of the then Abbey of Saint-André in Bruges, now Sint-Andriesabdij. From that time, too, came his habit of singing the psalms in Hebrew while striding about a rain-soaked Glenstal Abbey!

Father Columba spent the years 1960 to 1961 in Ealing Abbey while pursuing an extra-mural diploma-course in English Literature at London University. Returned to Glenstal, Father Columba taught Scripture to novices and juniors, was frequently invited to lecture in seminaries and had an active ministry as lecturer and retreat-giver to religious sisters. He was acutely aware of the sisters’ need for proper theological formation and did what he could to promote this, often against opposition from bishops and/or from religious superiors.

He was Master of Novices for several years until 1972, when he fulfilled a long-held dream and went to the Cameroons to begin the long process of making a Benedictine foundation in Nigeria, which was recovering from civil war. During his time in the Cameroons, he taught Scripture in the Swiss Benedictine foundation on Mont Fébé, just outside the capital Yaoundé. Finally, in 1975, after tireless lobbying of a Nigerian Government very suspicious of Irish priests but not knowing what monks were, it was possible to open the foundation at Eke, near Enugu, in the former Biafra. Over the year 1978 to 1979 the foundation gradually moved further northwest out of Igbo territory, to Ewu-Isan, some distance from Benin City. Father Columba served as Superior in both Eke and Ewu from 1976 to 1982. In that year he was replaced as Superior by Abbot Augustine O’Sullivan, but continued his ministries in teaching, formation and retreat-giving until his final return to Glenstal in 1996.

Back in Ireland, Father Columba was able to pursue one of his first loves, the Irish language, attending summer-schools and even Irish-dancing classes. In addition, he wrote articles and book-reviews for Irish religious periodicals, especially for Doctrine and Life, and gave lectures on Scripture and spirituality to seminarians and religious. A major work, Feed from the Tree of Life: Homilies for the Weekday Masses, appeared eight months after his death.

Father Columba died suddenly while waiting in the statio for Mass on 6^th February 2000. May he rest in peace.

The Feast of the Presentation has been named in various ways and has had a diversity of religious associations in Christian history. The date on which it falls, February 2nd, has also non-religious – even pagan – associations, as it coincides with the Celtic feast of Imbolc.

It is called the ‘Presentation of the Lord’ because on that day the Church recalls the episode in the life of Jesus when Joseph and Mary came to the Temple to present him to the priests, and through them to God, as their first-born son in accordance with the Jewish law listed in Leviticus 12 and Exodus 13. The rite was to be carried out forty days after the child’s birth, so the church commemorates it forty days after December 25^th, and the reason for that interval is given in Leviticus: the mother was ritually unclean for a week after the birth and then her blood had to be purified. The Feast was also known as The Purification of Mary before the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and a private ceremony called the ‘churching’ of women thirty days after they gave birth was almost universal.

In Exodus, another aspect of the rite is explained: it commemorates the liberation of the Hebrews on the night of the first Passover, when the first-born of the Egyptians were slain but those of the Hebrews saved. Ever afterwards, their first-born male was considered to belong to the Lord and had to be redeemed, or bought back from God, so the offering of sacrifice by the priest had a double purpose of purification and votive offering. Leviticus laid down that a lamb be offered or two turtle doves or pigeons, if the couple could not afford a lamb. Luke’s Gospel says that Joseph and Mary were in this category.

People sometimes ask what their circumstances were, and the Gospels tell us little beyond the fact that Joseph was a carpenter. That would have meant catering for the needs of a rural subsistence economy, making such items as yokes for animals, parts for ploughs – probably a reasonable living, but stretched to meet payment of the Roman taxes. They had not gone to live in Nazareth at the time of the Presentation and the visit of the magi bearing gifts occurred after that. What became of the gifts during their flight into Egypt, for example, we simply do not know…

They did ‘everything the law required’, and the account in Luke’s Gospel adds their encounter with Simeon, who emerges in the story at this point, but is otherwise unknown. He is described as ‘an upright and devout man’ (Lk 2:26). No doubt to the surprise of the parents – he was not the priest whose role it was to do so – he took the child into his arms and declared that he could now depart this life because he had seen the salvation God had promised, describing Jesus as ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’ (2:29). This reference to light is the origin of the practice of blessing candles as part of the liturgy of the Feast, and of the name Candlemas Day.

The two parts of Simeon’s testimony are significant: Jesus as saviour of the world, but also the final liberator of Israel, the long-expected Messiah. He blessed the child and then prophesied that Jesus would meet much opposition, and Mary too would suffer. This could imply that, as a humble person, the challenge of her calling to be the mother of the Messiah would bring great hardship.

Anna, who was always in the Temple, ‘came by just at that moment.’ She is described as a prophetess, a role ascribed to only a few women in the Old Testament, so her testimony has added significance. She embodied the religious aspirations of the people and saw Jesus as the one who was to come and achieve the final liberation of Israel, a destiny shrouded in mystery.

The Presentation of the Lord, grounded in Old Testament ritual, marked a decisive stage in the transition from Israel’s expectations to the universal salvation Christ would achieve by his life, death and resurrection.

Fintan Lyons OSB