Homily for the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
Readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 24:7, 8, 9, 10; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40
Celebrating the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, we hear Luke’s account of this scene when Jesus and his parents are greeted by 2 elders of the Temple, Simeon and Anna. They’ve been holding out for this and now Jesus has arrived in their midst, fulfilling all their hopes. Simeon proclaims his Nunc Dimittis:
Now, Master, you may let your servant go
in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.
Anna gives thanks to God and speaks about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.
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Some years ago, Pope John Paul II decided that this feast should be celebrated as the World Day of Consecrated Life, urging us to pray for all those who have taken vows in the Church to live a consecrated life and to pray for more young people to choose this path. This year, the Jubilee Year, we are being urged to make something special of this celebration.
Last year when reflecting on this celebration, Pope Francis urged those of us committed to the consecrated life to enhance our ability to wait patiently on the Lord just as Simeon and Anna had done. He spoke of two obstacles: our neglect of the interior life and our desire to adapt to a worldly lifestyle.
He concluded:
“Let us be careful, then, that the spirit of the world does not enter our religious communities, ecclesial life and our individual journey, otherwise we will not bear fruit. The Christian life and apostolic mission need the experience of waiting. Matured in prayer and daily fidelity, waiting frees us from the myth of efficiency, from the obsession with performance and, above all, from the pretence of pigeonholing God, because he always comes in unpredictable ways, he always comes at times that we do not choose and in ways that we do not expect.”[1]
Now I’m all for waiting on the Lord who comes and acts when we least expect, and I agree that we often risk neglecting interior life, while desiring to follow a more worldly lifestyle making predictions and plans.
But I have to confess some diffidence about celebrating this World Day of Consecrated Life in this Jubilee Year. I wonder whether institutes of consecrated life are losing their critical mass. The recent Synod noted:
Over the centuries, the Church has also been enriched spiritually by the many different forms of consecrated life. From the very beginning, the Church has recognised the action of the Spirit in men and women who have followed Christ along the path of the evangelical counsels, consecrating themselves to the service of God whether through contemplation or other forms of service. They are called to interrogate Church and society with their prophetic voice.[2]
This month I am 50 years a Jesuit. I count myself very blessed with the vocation to which I have been called. When I joined the Jesuits in 1975, the Jesuits were boldly proclaiming the need for us to relate our faith in Jesus to justice for all, especially the marginalised and the most oppressed. Having studied politics and law, I was attracted to this vision. Being an Australian, I thought this vision would need to include the First Australians. I was one of 10 who entered the two-year novitiate program. There were another 10 ahead of us. And the next year, there were another 10 to join us. The challenge to holiness and mission was jointly shared by comrades of similar ages and similar commitments, though in time the majority of us discerned other paths in life. We were the last generation who had commenced our schooling before Vatican II, being taught by numerous religious who had dedicated their lives to our formation and education.
Those days have gone. If I were to join the Jesuits today, I would need to discern how the Lord was calling me not to a novitiate of 20 generous individuals waiting on the Lord but to an experience where as a lone Australian novice I would probably be sent to the Philippines to join a handful of others from around Asia for my formation. If I were to join the Jesuits today at age 21, I would need to accept that most of my companions in the province would be old enough to be my father or grandfather, and that I would come to know more Jesuits who are deceased than are living.
Shortly after my novitiate, my provincial convened a group of half a dozen Jesuits to discern how we might contribute to faith and justice for Aboriginal Australians. Nowadays, there would not be half a dozen Jesuits available to discern such a mission.
The ageing and decline in numbers in the Jesuits is nothing compared with the changes in most of the major women’s religious congregations. And while equality and full participation for women in the Church remains an unresolved issue, that situation will be irreversible.
Let me be blunt. The appeal for my generation and those before me in religious life was that this was a distinctive bold and challenging call to mission and holiness. Since Vatican II, that is the call of each and every one of us. Given that we are all called to mission and holiness, what is distinctive in the 21st century in the west to being called to consecrated life?
On Friday, I concelebrated at the requiem mass of an extraordinary Carmelite sister, Sister Catherine of the Eucharist, aged 98. Catherine had made me a cincture for my ordination 40 years ago. I wore the cincture at Friday’s liturgy. 90 years ago, Catherine and my father made their first communion together at the convent school in Rockhampton. 75 years ago, Catherine and my father were involved in university student politics. Dad, being president of the National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS), urged Catherine to take on the role of secretary and to join a delegation to an international students’ congress in Prague. In Prague, she started thinking. Seeing the zeal with which so many of the student delegates embraced communism, she asked herself why she did not have the same zeal for her faith, the same zeal for mission and holiness. She then travelled widely wrestling with such questions, ending up in Rome at Christmas 1950, the Holy Year.[3] She returned to Australia and lived 70 years at Carmel in Brisbane often serving a prioress. She and my father were lifelong friends. She offered prayers and spiritual insights for countless people in times of need.
Her life of exemplary mission and holiness has been an inspiration for many. On Friday, we celebrated her life with her 12 Carmelite sisters, aware that her community will probably be much reduced in the coming years. Celebrating the World Day of Consecrated Life, let’s ask for the grace that we all commit ourselves to a life of mission and holiness, seeking to match the zeal of those around us, and let’s pray for those few in the coming generation who will discern the distinctive path of consecrated life without the same companionship and youthful possibilities for mission which opened in a previous century. Let’s remember that God ‘always comes in unpredictable ways, he always comes at times that we do not choose and in ways that we do not expect’. Let’s never lose sight of the call to ‘interrogate Church and society with (our) prophetic voice’. And join with me in giving thanks for 50 years of life as a Jesuit in my faltering attempts to live a life of holiness committed to the mission of faith and justice, and yes, hopefully with a touch of zeal.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is serving as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is Adjunct Professor of the Thomas More Law School at ACU and is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his new book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2024/documents/20240202_omelia-vita-consacrata.html
[2] Final Document: For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Ministry, 26 October 2024, #65.
[3] See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Wt81A4Z-c. Watch from from -1:17:53 to -1:13:00.
