Homily for December 30th, 2013: Luke 2:16-40.
The prophetess
Anna, whom we have just heard about in the gospel, was very old. “She never
left the Temple,
“Luke tells us, “but worshipped day and night with fasting and prayer.” There
are such people in the Church today: contemplative nuns, who do not leave the
convent for charitable or other good works, like most Catholic Sisters. They
lead mostly hidden lives, praying for others.
Anna has
evidently been praying, as devout Jews had done for centuries, for the coming
of God’s promised anointed servant, the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought
the infant into the Temple
to present him to the Lord, as the Jewish law required, both the priest Simeon
and Anna recognized at once that this was the long awaited Messiah.
How they
most have rejoiced! Anna’s joy is evident in the fact that she cannot keep the
news to herself. “She gave thanks to God,” Luke tells us, “and spoke about the
child to all those who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Then comes what
at first seems like an anti-climax. Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth with their child. Save for a glimpse
of Jesus back in the Jerusalem
Temple at age twelve, we
know nothing about his boyhood, adolescence, or young manhood until, at age 30,
he begins his public ministry with 40 days of fasting in the desert. These are
called “the hidden years.”
Are they
really so hidden, however? “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” people in Nazareth will ask later
(Mt. 13:55). So we can assume that as a boy, Jesus must have worked in the
carpenter’s shop. Is it conceivable that any shoddy work came out of that shop?
that customers were kept waiting beyond the promised delivery date? And it was
there, in that carpenter’s shop, in accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations
of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life, that Jesus “grew and
became strong, filled with wisdom,” as Luke tells us at the end of today’s
gospel.
He calls us to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment