WEDNESDAY REFLECTION
Mid-week Reflection
3rd February 2021
Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the World Day of Consecrated Life. It was in 1997 that Pope Saint John Paul II instituted a day of prayer for men and women in consecrated life. It was a good choice of day for such a celebration. Traditionally, this was the day on which candles were blessed symbolizing Christ who is the light of the world. So, too, those in consecrated life are called to reflect the light of Jesus Christ to all people. It is our joy and privilege to highlight the gift of consecrated men and women for the whole Church. We can offer our rosary asking Our Lady for an outpouring of grace from her Son upon those who have dedicated their lives to God in the Religious Life.
We pray that they may accomplish what the Lord deems necessary in their lives to draw them and those they love and minister to, closer to Him. But what does the feast say to us who are not Consecrated Religious? This is now forty days after Christmas Day, and, it sometimes seems to me that this would be a good day for the giving of presents. Well, God gives us a present. The “presentation” of the Lord shows that the Lord is a present given to us and to be shared with others. Joseph and Mary’s presentation of Jesus to God the Father was a sacrifice and they would keep on making this sacrifice as Jesus continued to grow. They knew that even as parents, they were not the ultimate meaning of their child’s life. They would be shaken when the boy Jesus, not yet a teenager, went missing to be found, what must have seemed an eternity later, in the Temple. But that was almost nothing in comparison to the event twenty years after when Mary, now on her own, would be at Calvary. That day, she made the greatest presentation of her life.
Monsignor Monaghan
