A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. When the time came before their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the lord as it is written in the law of the lord, every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the lord. And to they came to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous. He was a devout man looking for the consolation of Israel, and the holy spirit was upon him.
And it had been revealed to Simeon by the holy spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the lord's Christ. Inspired by the holy spirit, Simeon came into the temple. And when the parents, of course, is Joseph and Mary, brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, Simeon took up the child in his arms and blessed god and said, lord, now let us thou, thy servant, depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen the salvation which has been prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to thy people Israel. And Jesus' father and mother marveled at what said about him.
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, behold, this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This is another one of the incidents which occur in what we call the infancy narratives. And, again, this is one of those texts which has an has become a source of considerable controversy.
But there are several significant points here. Oh, there are many here. There's no question about that. There's so much that comes to your mind when you read this text and especially when you keep in mind what follows as we can easily do. Because when we read this, we know how it's all going to end as far as our lord's life is concerned.
The one thing we don't know how it's going how how it's going to end is how our lives are going to end. Now notice just one of the eyes. I say there there are so many factors involved here. But this prediction about Mary that a sword will pierce her heart. And notice how the day after Christmas, we have the feast of Stephen Martyr.
Right after while the the church is still echoing and still resplendent with the glories and the joys of Christmas. Here, the church slaps us down with saying, look, look at your first martyr. This is what it means to be a Christian. And here again, this should be an occasion of great joy, the presentation of the firstborn into the temple. See, the idea was that the firstborn of man or a beast belong to the lord, so he had to buy it back.
And so Jesus' mother and father, Joseph and Mary, they bring him to the temple. If you notice it's Jerusalem, there's only one temple, and there is no temple today at all. And there hasn't been since Titus destroyed the Temple Of Jerusalem in '6 in '70. Now the idea was that then you had to offer an appropriate gift because the firstborn belonged to God. And for people of lesser means, it was a simple gift of doves or pigeons or something like that.
But it's it was an occasion of great joy. And notice how this particular reading ends, that a sword will pierce Mary's heart. Now, of course, it's morose if we only dwell upon these aspects of our faith. But how can we, on the other hand, eliminate these considerations and treat our our faith and above all the way we live it and above all the way we see life through it. How can we eliminate all of that or how can we tolerate all of that without bringing in all of the aspects of what it means to be a Christian, of what it means to be a follower of Christ, and more specifically, it means to be a Catholic.
There's a tendency today to eliminate the word Catholic and to talk about Christians. And it's and in a sense, there's a there's a a a some don't even like to use the word Christian. They'd rather use the word such words as community of god or people of god or god's people or sons and daughters of god or something of that sort. I have no objection to these things. This is all done in the name of ecumenism of bringing us all together.
Well, of course, a lot of this is poppycock. Christ came, and he has to be received. He brought salvation to the world, and it isn't distributed throughout the world in a collectivity of contradictions. Whatever you may say about Christ, he was no fool. The world in some his world, part of his world treated him as one, but he wasn't one.
And so it by saying we are different, by saying the Catholic church represents the faith of Jesus Christ, pure and unadulterated, and it is the sole voice, we are simply speaking what has to be either a truth or one of the worst lies the world has seen. And so I refer here to Catholics, to the men and women who occupy these pews on a weekend or on a holy day, and above all, on Christmas and Easter when the church doesn't seem big enough to hold all our parishioners. You wonder what's happened to all of these people in between times. But the point that is this, that how many of us hold together or try to hold together our faith? That Joseph and Mary bring their child with joy to present him to the lord in the temple of Jerusalem.
This was a big thing. And look, it winds up by by Simeon predicting that a sword will pierce Mary's heart. You talk about the specter coming into the into the celebration. You talk about gloom descending upon joy. Well, what a picture this is.
And yet, can you escape this? You see, it's so easy to take one segment of life and to say that's all there is to it. Well, all you have to do is to live long enough and you'll know how untrue that is, how awfully untrue. I said awfully, awe inspiring, awe inspiring. Because life is extremely complex and its endings are just as painful in some ways as its beginnings.
And our Christian faith means, if it means anything, that we grasp all of life, all of it in its entirety, and see it through the eyes of faith. That's what it means is to be a Catholic. It means that our entire life from beginning to end, its joys, its sorrows, its tragedies, its successes, its victories, its defeats, all of it. And this is the commonplace of all lives, that all of this must be grasped. Notice, I said grasped, has to be welcomed.
I said welcomed through the eyes of faith. You'll say, well, how can one welcome the tragedies, the illnesses, and all the rest of these terrible blows and burdens that life brings, and it brings them. As I say, if you don't think so, hang around for a while and you will see. It to be then a Catholic, to be a follower of Christ means that you get a hold of it all and you say all of it makes sense. Not because I see that it makes sense, but because I know that God makes sense and that all of it is in the palm of his hand, including little old me.
So I do say welcome. It's not a slip of the tongue at all. We you know, our religion should mean so much more to us in joy and in sorrow and all the rest than it actually does, than it actually does. A a too often our religion is reserved for this particular segment of our life or that particular segment of our life. We go up to the Mountain Of Jerusalem and we have all the joy of the presentation.
And we say there is nothing else but this. Or we go up to the Mountain Of Jerusalem and all we come back with is the is the words ringing in our ears, a sword will pierce your heart. And that's all we've heard on our journey to the mountain. Well, that's not the way it is because our journey to Jerusalem is a journey to Christ, his temple, and there we accept all of it, not as we want it, but as it is given to us by what we firmly believe is a loving father. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit.
Amen.