Presentation of the Lord
See Commentary on Luke 2:22-40
Homily 1 - 2014
What was the sword that pierced Mary’s heart? Simeon didn’t say. But perhaps you can get some sense of what it might have been by looking at the sword [or one or two of them] that can pierce your hearts. I think that, for those of you who are married, the sharpest sword comes from your own learning to love – to love your spouse for a start; and to love your children, for seconds.
Growing in love means coming to terms with your inevitable need to control the ones you love – not just eventually to face the impossible – that you can’t [at least in any deep sense – and that is struggle enough!]; but coming to see that the deepest love is always totally unconditional, without strings. You love the other precisely as the other is, in all their imperfection – and you do so willingly and joyfully. With children there is the delicate interplay between responsibility and control. Sometimes it might be harder for fathers and their sons than it is for the mothers. I don’t know. But it, too, is struggle; and it is pain.
Love can ask more than that. Mary at the foot of the Cross had to accept that she could do nothing to control the situation. She had to witness, helplessly, the prolonged brutal torture of her Son. But he was there on the Cross because he freely chose to be. He did not want it. But it was the price of his integrity and of his choice to love – and he was totally committed to those.
I think that Mary, in her love for him – her readiness to identify, as totally as she could, with his mind and heart – had to learn to say YES wholeheartedly to what he chose, to what he wanted. She had to say YES, freely, as he freely did, to his totally dehumanising death. That would have been at the price of every maternal instinct that she had. She suffered vicariously, through her choice to love, what he suffered physically. From the human point of view, she lived his suffering. Which was how she became the Mother of the Church, the New Eve – the Mother of all the redeemed living.
Homily 2 - 2020
Today’s passage concluded with the observation, “They went back to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. Meanwhile the child grew to maturity, and he was filled with wisdom.” In fact he stayed home in Nazareth for thirty years, living with mother and father and probably the extended family. As he grew over those 30 years, Mary grew, too, from about 15 years of age to 45 — crucial years in any woman’s life. Joseph’s presence is never mentioned during Jesus’ public life. The general presumption is that he died during those years while Jesus was still in Nazareth — probably more towards their end than in the earlier years.
The 15 year-old Mary would have become quite a different woman by the time she hit 45. She, too, would have matured and, along with her son, “grown in wisdom”. No doubt the same could be said of Joseph. Both parents would have had a deep influence on Jesus’ growth in wisdom. Certainly, by the time he reached 30 and began his public life, Jesus knew where he stood; he knew what he wanted to say; and he said it with conviction and confidence.
What did he pick up from his parents as they sat around and talked after their evening meals, or around the fire on the colder winter evenings? What did he learn as he observed his parents interacting with each other, with members of the extended family and with people around town? From where did he derive his deep habitual concern for the marginalised? How did he arrive at the conviction that the world would make sense only as people learnt to love their enemies? Why was he impressed particularly by the merciful, the pure of heart and the honest, and those he called peace-makers?
Luke had spoken of Mary — a 15 year-old young woman, hardly more than a girl — already “magnifying the Lord” who “pulled down princes … and exalted the lowly”; who “sent the rich away empty” and “filled the hungry with good things”; who persistently “showed mercy to Israel” whenever Israel just as persistently turned away from God and betrayed God’s love.
Over the next thirty years, together with her son and, for some of the time, together with Joseph, Mary continued to grow in wisdom — not simply by coming to know God better, but by becoming more thoroughly like the God in whom she exulted, learning to love God with her whole being — mind, heart, soul and strength — as she opened her heart ever more to the love of all God’s creatures.
Mary’s vision moved beyond black or white, right or wrong, ordered or chaotic. As she matured, she discovered that she could love all people — right and wrong, ordered and chaotic, however they thought or acted. Instead of narrowing the world into categories of “either/or”, she opened her heart to the inclusiveness of a “both/and” way of perceiving. I marvel at how she held in tension her spontaneous, irrepressible “exulting in God" who had just made of her an unmarried, pregnant mother in a dangerous honour-obsessed, violently patriarchal culture. Equally easily she balanced the fact that God had "done great things” for her without her losing touch, even for a moment, with the profound realisation that she was anything other than God’s “lowly handmaid”.
It was this “both/and” way of perceiving that allowed her to hold together both strong disagreement and spontaneous hostility and even dislike towards others with the calm ability honestly and deliberately to interact with them with genuine care and respect. It was this freedom that enabled her to love anyone unconditionally.
From where did that freedom come? Luke wrote of the 15 year-old Mary already appreciating and “pondering" experience. Matthew showed Joseph responsibly weighing both law and conscience. After spending his formative years with both Mary and Joseph, it was no surprise that Jesus regularly went aside to ponder prayerfully before acting responsibly. It seems that all three confirmed each other in their common pursuit of wisdom.
In so many ways, Jesus’ parents can be powerful role-models and unequalled life-coaches for us all.