February 3, 2025

Sunday 2 February 2025

Presentation of the Lord in the Temple – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Malachi 3,1-4

Psalm: 23 (24), 7, 8, 9, 10

2th reading: Hebrews 2,14-18

Gospel: Luke 2,22:40-XNUMX

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“The Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple… Who will be able to endure the day of his coming? Who will be able to stand when he appears?” This announcement from the book of Malachi which is given to us as the first reading today; we may have a little trouble seeing its fulfillment in the entry of this 40-day-old baby into the Temple of Jerusalem. He goes completely unnoticed: apart from Simeon and Anna, no one notices him. No one sees the Lord in him, no one sees in him the fulfillment of the announcement of the prophet Malachi. And yet, this consecration of the first-born, as we have heard it: “Every firstborn male shall be consecrated to the Lord.”, will find the fullness of its accomplishment, first in the baptism in the Jordan, where Jesus freely gives himself to take the head of the people of sinners, but especially by his Passion and by his Cross where Jesus will fully accomplish this consecration to God, this offering of his whole life to God. The Letter to the Hebrews shows us amply how, by his offering on the cross, Jesus enters into the true Temple, not made by human hands, which is Heaven (Cf. Heb 8,2:9,24; XNUMX:XNUMX).

Who will be able to stand when he shows up? The Virgin Mary standing at the foot of the Cross…

The Lord offers himself; the Lord is offered and the Lord offers himself. He gives himself entirely to the Father so that the Father may give him to us: he gives him to us in the Incarnation and gives him back to us in the Resurrection, as a gift of mercy, as a gift of forgiveness for all our sins that led to the Cross. Through the sacraments of Christian initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, we are placed with Jesus to enter into this offering of the Lord, to make it our own, to become ourselves an offering to the praise of his glory.

In number 10 of the great text on the Church of the Second Vatican Council, lumen gentium, the Church makes us hear this: Christ the Lord, high priest among men (cf. Heb 5,1:5-1,6), has made the new people “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (cf. Rev 5,9:10; 1:2,4-10). The baptized, in fact, through regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual dwelling place and a holy priesthood, to offer, through all the activities of the Christian, as many spiritual sacrifices, and to proclaim the wonders of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light (cf. 2,42Pt 47:12,1-1). Therefore all the disciples of Christ, persevering in prayer and praise of God (cf. Acts 3,15:XNUMX-XNUMX), must offer themselves as living victims, holy, pleasing to God (cf. Rom XNUMX:XNUMX), bear witness to Christ on all the face of the earth, and give an account, in every request, of the hope that is in them of eternal life (cf. XNUMX Pet XNUMX:XNUMX).

Yes, we are consecrated to God, through the Son, in the Spirit. And to remind us all that the baptized are consecrated to God to show the world that the vocation of man is to give oneself entirely to God out of love, among the baptized, some are called to live this consecration more radically in celibacy for the Kingdom. We call them the “consecrated,” and thus we risk losing the idea that all the baptized are consecrated! Those who, in the Church, in celibacy for the Kingdom, seek to live more fully the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, are not “consecrated” while others are not: they live this consecration in a more radical way, so that all may be encouraged to live for the Lord.

We know well how Saint Therese constantly contemplates this mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, this mystery of God made man. We cannot cite a particular passage because it is in all her writings that this shines through. She never ceases to contemplate Jesus in his humanity, and in this sense, she is truly a daughter of the “Mother”, of the great Teresa — Saint Teresa of Avila — for whom it is fundamental to contemplate Christ in his Incarnation, to contemplate the humanity of Jesus; because it is in this humanity that the Lord reveals himself. And this is why the Gospels show us Jesus, not just to listen to him, but to watch him move, sleep, eat, act, touch people, take children in his arms, etc. etc. The Gospel also shows us Jesus in his Passion, very concrete, on the Cross, and it also shows him to us in his resurrection as the witnesses tell us.

Yes, brothers and sisters, God became man so that man, through this God made man, would allow himself to be divinized. Our vocation is to rediscover the image and likeness. Our vocation is to live the very life of God. Our vocation is to allow ourselves to be given birth to the divine life, by allowing ourselves to be adopted by God the Father and by learning to live as children of God, as brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus. Learning to live as children of God is learning to imitate Christ: to follow him in order to reproduce in us all his mystery, in our own genius, in our singularity. It is not an imitation of aping, it is an imitation… how can I describe it…? an imitation of adhesion, a loving imitation where I seek to love as he loved us, since this is his new commandment: “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13,34:XNUMX). It is by letting ourselves be loved by Christ, especially in the sacraments of the Church—and very particularly in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation—that we learn to love our brothers better. But it is also by seeking to love our brothers as we think Jesus loves them that we understand how he loves us. The offering of our life is to learn to renounce our little selfish self in order to make ourselves servants of God and of our brothers in the concrete acts of our existence.

The celebration of the Eucharist is a school of the gift of ourselves and more than a school, it is an apprenticeship in the gift of ourselves. It is even a gift of grace so that we receive the capacity to offer ourselves ever better through Jesus, with Him and in Him. One of the moments of the Eucharistic celebration that I think is important to live more deeply is the moment of the Offertory. The gesture of the Offertory, where we bring the bread and wine, “fruit of the earth and of the work of men”, represents the offering of all our lives to Christ. By placing the bread and wine on the altar — the altar that represents Christ: just now, I kissed it, I incensed it, it is honored with light — it is as if we gave ourselves to Christ all together and each one of us, that we offered ourselves to him, so that he may offer us to the Father in his offering. We learn from Christ to offer ourselves to the Father. In the great Eucharistic prayer, we present to the Father the only offering that saves us, that of Jesus, which is as it were gathered up in the gestures of Holy Thursday: “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.”

We ask the Father for the grace to make us enter into the offering of Jesus. And the Father's response is to give us Jesus as food so that, through Him, with Him and in Him, in the rest of our week, we offer ourselves to the Father in very concrete love for God - in prayer among other things - and for our brothers in daily service.

The Eucharistic celebration is a school of the offering of ourselves.

This is why, since the beginning, Christians have gathered together every first day of the week, on Sunday, the Lord's Day, to continually return to this offering of Christ and ask for the grace to enter into it ever more, so that Christ may make us more and more like him, so that we may fulfill the plan of God who called us to life to contemplate his Son in us.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine