OUR OFFERING IN THE TEMPLE

 A REFLECTION FOR CANDLEMAS

This coming Wednesday we celebrate the feast of Candlemas.  It is a feast that has two important component parts, being at the same time the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple. 

Our Blessed Lady brings her Baby to the temple at Jerusalem after the requisite forty days have elapsed since his birth.  She offers him to God, a mystical foreshadowing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in which the same Son of God is offered to the same Father in heaven.  As such, our Lady’s role is that of the priest who makes the offering, and her ritual purification at this ceremony also foreshadows the ritual washing of the priest’s hands at the Offertory of each Mass.

This offering of the Christ Child to his Father marks the beginning of the end of the Old Testament.  The blood sacrifices are over.  We are no longer commanded by God to offer the blood of animals.  Now it is Christ who will offer himself, the perfect, unspotted Victim, to God in the only possible sufficient Sacrifice that can be made.  But we have a part to play in this sacrifice too.  Because now we are asked to offer our own blood in the form of sorrow and suffering, and especially in the sorrow of repentance for having offended God.  Now it is our own willingness to suffer for Christ and with Christ that is pleasing to God: “for thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it to thee; but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.  The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.”

Sometimes it is a sacrifice just to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  It takes up our time, we have to exert ourselves to organize the family, travel great distances, fast from food and drink, and perhaps miss out on other more pleasurable social activities.  All these little sacrifices pale, however, before the Great Sacrifice itself and our participation in it.  For if we do truly take part and share in that Sacrifice of our Redemption by offering ourselves to God with all our sufferings, our souls will be pierced like that of our Lady.  If we present ourselves to God, we must expect that our Blessed Saviour will take us at our word, and will provide us with the opportunity to share in the work of salvation through our sorrows.  Holy Mass is not for the faint-hearted.  It is our chance to follow our Lord himself not only to the temple, but beyond to Calvary, there to be presented to our heavenly Father as a victim for the sacrifice, uniting ourselves, through the Mass and especially in Holy Communion, with Christ the Saviour of souls.

Let us offer our Holy Communions that we joyfully suffer unto glory.