Homily for the Feast of the
Presentation of the Lord
Feb. 2, 2025
Luke 2: 22-40
Our Lady of
the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis
Xavier, Bronx
“Every male
that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord” (Luke 2: 23).
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
(Guercino)
Torah,
specifically Exodus 13 (vv. 2, 12), lays down the rule that every firstborn
male—human or beast—belongs to God. The
animals of the herd or flock were sacrificed.
Boys had to be redeemed by payment of 5 shekels to a priest (Num
3:47-48), which Luke doesn’t mention. The
offering of 2 doves or pigeons (2:24) was for Mary’s ritual purification after
childbirth, which Luke sort of mentions in the 1st line; he says “their
purification,” but Torah speaks of only the mother.
The practice
of redeeming the firstborn son reflects Israel’s experience in Egypt. The 10th
plague struck down every firstborn of man and beast among the Egyptians, but the
angel of death passed over the Hebrews whose houses had been marked by the
blood of the passover lambs. It may also
reflect that the Jews didn’t do what some of their pagan neighbors did,
offering their own children as human sacrifices. God can lay claim to our lives, but he also
provides for redemption.
Our Christian
theology takes a broader approach. In
Jesus Christ it’s not just firstborn males who are consecrated to God but
everyone, male or female, of any place in the birth order, who’s consecrated to
God by Baptism. All Christians are, as
St. Peter says (I, 2:9) and the 1st Preface for Sundays repeats, a holy nation,
a royal priesthood, a chosen race, a people of God’s own possession.
Since the time
of St. John Paul II, we’ve marked the Sunday closest to Feb. 2 as Day of
Consecrated Life. This is much more
particular than our universal Christian consecration by Baptism. God consecrates certain individuals to
himself for his service and as public witnesses that he is Creator and Lord,
that he alone is to be worshiped, that our lives belong totally to him. These individuals are vowed to his
service—vowed as members of religious orders.
You’re perhaps familiar with religious orders of men or women—nuns or
sisters, priests and brothers, like the Salesians (naturally, I have to mention
them 1st!), Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, Christian Brothers, Marists,
Missionaries of Charity, Sisters of Life, Little Sisters of the Poor, and so
on. These women and men live in
community, follow a specific rule of life, make public vows of chastity,
poverty, and obedience, and carry out some mission in the Church, which might
be, for example, prayer, education, health care, or the missions.
There are also
some individuals who live in the world, not in a religious community, but are
consecrated to God by vow. In the
ancient Church some women consecrated themselves to remain virgins for Christ,
Jesus being their mystical husband—saints like Lucy and Agnes, and in the
Middle Ages Catherine of Siena, and Rose of Lima in the 17th century. In recent years the Church has revived the
order of consecrated virgins, dedicated to Christ by a public ritual and a
public vow of celibate chastity. These
women, living in their own homes, may fill church roles of some sort in their
parish or diocese, or may hold secular jobs like teaching, nursing, or business. One, for instance, is a canon lawyer (a
specialist in church law) who also answers questions in a weekly column in
Catholic media.
Still another
form of consecrated life is what’s called secular institutes. These women or men live in the world, which
is why they’re called “secular,” in their own home and follow their own
careers. But they belong to a specific
group or institute with a rule of life, support each other, and make vows of
chastity, poverty, and obedience like nuns or brothers. I don’t know how many of these there are in
the Church, but there are 3 such institutes in St. John Bosco’s worldwide
family, 2 of women and 1 of men.
The Church
today celebrates all forms of consecrated life:
religious orders, secular institutes, and sacred virginity. These forms of consecration are important for
their public witness that Jesus Christ is the supreme purpose of our lives. In today’s gospel, Simeon proclaims, “My eyes
have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples, a
light for revelation to the Gentiles” as well as for Israel (2:30-32). Vowed religious, vowed secular persons,
consecrated virgins are all meant to shine as lights to the whole world,
testifying that God has saved us in Christ.
A relationship with Christ is our family bond; by renouncing conjugal
love, Pope Francis said yesterday, religious speak to the world about the
primacy of God’s love, which is the source and model of all human love.
Consecrated
persons also testify that Christ is our wealth; we don’t need piles of personal
riches. They bear witness that Christ’s
will and not their own is the path to peace and contentment, just as Christ
obeyed his Father.
Here are 2 quotes
from our Salesian rule of life:
“Religious profession is a sign of a loving encounter between the Lord
who calls and the disciple who responds by giving himself totally to God and to
his brothers and sisters.” (art. 23). “Surrendering ourselves totally to God, whom
we love above all else, we commit ourselves to a form of life based entirely on
gospel values” (art. 60).
That’s the
witness we offer to God’s people and the whole world. Know also that we religious and other
consecrated persons pray for you. We ask
your prayers that we be faithful to the vocation that God has called us to and
we’ve responded to.
