Thoughts on the Presentation of the Lord

 

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, celebrated on February 2, is rich in symbolism and promise. It commemorates the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, when Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to the Temple and present him to the Father in accord with the Law of Israel. Known for centuries as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the feast is also called Candlemas, marked by the blessing of candles and the proclamation of Christ as Light.

The feast day Preface proclaims the heart of the mystery: “For your co-eternal Son was presented on this day in the Temple and revealed by the Spirit as the glory of Israel and Light of the nations.” What is revealed is not only the identity of Jesus, but how God brings about salvation in Jesus. The Son comes not simply to speak or to act, but to be given. In his flesh—in his living and dying, his suffering and rising—the Son is given over entirely in love to the Father, and in that self-gift he becomes the light and salvation of all peoples.

In the Presentation, the Son is brought forward and offered, as sacrifices were once offered in the Temple. Yet this offering surpasses all others: it is the offering of the eternal Son to God the Father, a gift that already points to the self-offering the Son will make on the Cross.

In contemplating this mystery, we glimpse our own place within Christ’s offering. United to him through Baptism, we are taken up into his self-gift. In him, our lives are presented, consecrated, and entrusted to the Father—held within the light that no darkness can overcome.

-Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J.

Thoughts on the beatitudes

 

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:1–12a

Friends, our Gospel for today is one of the most beautiful and important in the New Testament: the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the eight beatitudes. Why is it so important? Because it is the Son of God telling us how to be happy. It is the one who can’t be wrong telling us how to achieve that which each of us most basically wants. What could be more compelling? At the heart of Jesus’s program are these beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.” These name the very heart of the spiritual program, for they name the ways that we participate most directly in the divine life. One of the most important words to describe God in the Old Testament is chesed (tender mercy). The New Testament version of this is found in the First Letter of John: God is agape (love). Everything else we say about God should be seen as an aspect of this chesed and this agape. Chesed is compassion; agape is willing the good of the other. Therefore, if you want to be happy, desire to be like God. Do it and you’ll be happy. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Ordinary Time

This Sunday we continue a journey through a brief period of “Ordinary Time” before Lent begins in a few weeks. Having celebrated the mystery of the Incarnation, our focus shifts to Jesus’ adult ministry. The questions now become: “What does it mean for Jesus to be the Savior and Messiah? What does he stand for, as revealed by his actions and his words? And, very importantly, what are we supposed to be as his disciples?

 

As you know, the scripture readings of our Sunday liturgies are on a three-year cycle, and each year highlights one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). This year belongs to Matthew. During Advent and Christmas, at the beginning of the new liturgical year, we read Matthew’s narrative about the birth of Jesus. Now we read his description of Jesus starting his ministry, recruiting followers, announcing the “good news,” and healing the ills of people, both physical and spiritual. Matthew’s story has moved from a description of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, to the story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert, to the news that John has

been arrested. As we learned in last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus sees this as the sign that he must begin his own ministry, and so he moves from Nazareth to the larger, busier town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. We were told that Jesus went around the whole of Galilee

with the result that he soon became, in his own characteristic way, a powerful and magnetic figure, a sign of liberation unleashing forgotten and discarded hopes.

 

On each Sunday which remains between now and the beginning of Lent on February 18, we will be listening to Gospel selections from what has become known as the “Sermon on the Mount.” While we may speak of the Sermon on the Mount as if it were one single sermon preached on one single occasion, it is far more than that. It is, in fact, a kind of representative summary of all the sermons that Jesus ever preached. In it we have the essence of the teaching of Jesus to those who desire to be his disciples. Anyone who heard it in its present form (107 verses!) would be exhausted long before the end. Maybe in these coming weeks there are blessings to be found in listening to the gospel selections as if we were hearing them for the very first time, letting ourselves be dazzled, challenged and ultimately saved by the message and the promises it conveys.

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

Thoughts on love

 

Third Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 4:21–25

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says the measure that you use will be measured out to you. He is speaking about the loop of grace. God’s love can truly dwell in us only in the measure that we give it away. If we try to cling to it, it will never work its way into our own hearts. But if we give it away as an act of love, then we get more of it, entering into a delightful stream of grace. If you give away the divine love, then you keep it. Love is described in the Christian tradition as a theological virtue, a habit or capacity that comes as a gift from God. This is true because love is a participation in the divine life. God is uniquely capable of love in the complete sense, since he alone can fully will the good of the other as other. What makes real love possible among humans is only a sharing in the love with which God loves, some participation in the divine to-be. When we root ourselves in the God who has no need, who exists in radical self-sufficiency, we can begin to love the other as he does. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Saint Paul

The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, celebrated on January 25, casts a distinctive light on the Church’s mission. The great Baroque artist Caravaggio captures this moment with striking clarity in The Conversion on the Way to Damascus. Saul lies outstretched on the ground, arms extended, his body forming the shape of a cross as he is seized by the light of Christ. The fiery reds of his vest and cloak suggest the work of the Holy Spirit, through whose action Saul the persecutor becomes Paul the apostle.

Paul’s mission, the proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles, is the hard work of making Christ known in the face of hostility, indifference, and doubt – the mission of the Church now and always. It is not a matter of clever rhetoric or momentary fervor. For Paul and his co-workers—Timothy, Titus, and others—it requires vigilance, fidelity to the word of God, and the patient labor of building up the Church. Central to this work is the fostering of unity amid division, so that those who belong to Christ may be united “in the same mind and the same purpose.” Writing to the Corinthians, Paul insists that the Church is not founded on the charisma of so-called super-apostles, nor divided into factions gathered around Apollo, Cephas, or even Paul himself. Instead, the Church is founded on the Crucified Lord, whose Body cannot be divided.



This week the Church prays with particular intensity for Christian unity, a concern that Pope Leo XIV has made central to his pastoral mission. Christ’s call to repentance and the nearness of God’s reign form the deepest basis of our unity in faith, a unity that is never inward-looking. Instead, shaped by the Cross, it carries its own missionary power, drawing others into communion with the Lord who first called Paul on the road to Damascus.

In Christ,



Fr. Hermes 

Thoughts on miracles

 

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Mark 3:7–12

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus cured so many people that he had to climb into a boat to escape the press of the crowd. To this day the Church carries on his gracious healing ministry.  We recall that the apostles of Jesus simply continued what the Master did. And one of the principal marks of the Lord’s ministry was clearly healing. There was, of course, a deep biblical conviction that when the day of the Lord arrives, creation would be set right. What we witness in the healings of Jesus is just this repairing of creation. If you doubt that miracles of physical healing still take place in the life of the Church, I invite you to read Craig Keener’s book Miracles or visit the Church in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, where the expectation of the miraculous is taken for granted. But the Church also brings healing to mind, soul, will, and imagination. The Bible knows that sin has done tremendous damage to us, and anyone involved in pastoral ministry knows what this looks like: broken minds, divided hearts, addicted passions. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on evangelization

 

Listen to the Voice of Love

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

As a reaction to a very aggressive, manipulative, and often degrading type of evangelization, we sometimes have become hesitant to make our own religious convictions known, thereby losing our sense of witness. Although at times it seems better to deepen our own commitments than to evangelize others, it belongs to the core of Christian spirituality to reach out to the other with good news, and to speak without embarrassment about  what we “have heard and … seen with our own eyes…. Watched and touched with our hands”(1 John 1:1).

Reflection Question: When was the last time you had the opportunity to reach out to the other with good news?

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”   - 1 John 1: 1-3