We celebrate the feast of the presentation of the Lord today, the purification of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, a feast of the Lord and a feast of Our Lady. Our Lady brings the child Jesus into the temple in accordance with the law of Moses to have him redeemed and Our Lady purified. And they were just going through the formalities, obedience to the law, but Our Lord mysteriously was purifying the sons of Levi, purifying the priests of that day, purifying the
priests of that day, purifying the
priests of today, purifying all of us who are part of the common priesthood to be purified from our sins and to be able to make sacrifices to God of our very lives, of all that is dear to us, all that we have. We are offering to the Lord, to the Father as Mary did, offering Jesus to the Father for our sanctification.
For our salvation. So it's a it's a feast of purification. It's a feast of we offering our lives to God, purified lives. We want to be purified of sin and purified of of the earth and our sinfulness and selfishness to be purified and to be offered in a purified way through Our Lady as Our Lady did of Our Lord. And it's a feast of purification.
And it's also of light, of light, Jesus entering into the world, entering into the temple as a light to the world and how we too are to image that light to the world in our evangelization and our good example and our works of charity to the world. So as we do in the Holy Mass and we offer up our gifts to to the altar and then we offer ourselves up in in the Holy Mass, we offer up our gifts to the altar and then we offer ourselves up in in the Holy Mass.
In Jesus as he's hanging from the cross at the consecration and he's offering himself up to the Father for our sins. We are doing that every every mass. We're offering ourselves as well, offering up our day, offering up our prayers and our crosses and our joys and our many sacrifices, our body, our will, our obedience. We're offering up everything to God every day.
Especially at Holy Mass.
But we're offering up to the Father in union with Jesus our our lives. This is what we're doing throughout our life and every day.
And we this offering we make we we make in the arms of Our Lady so that she purifies our offerings. She purifies everything we do, our good works, which are so imperfect.
She purifies them. She embellishes them. She makes them.
Oo sling to God if we are united to her and we offer up everything through her to.
To the Father.
Oo sling to God if we are united to her and we offer up everything through her to.
So we're doing that in a miniature way at every mass, but in a big way and this and this celebration this proceso the presentation.
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of the lord offering ourselves up in a purified way to god in everything we do all our works today
and every day all our prayers there's always an offering to the father as the incense
goes up as we present gifts to the altar where we are we are offering ourselves to the father
this is this is our life this is what we're doing every day throughout our life to the end
of our life and and we too are to be lights to the to the world the shining lights shining lights
of virtue and holiness and love for god and love for our neighbor and preaching and and our boldness
and our and our fortitude in in the world and in the midst of the fight against evil we are light
to the in the darkness of the world there's so much darkness in the world because god is receding
more and more from the
world
hearts of men and from the world and it's getting darker
and we need to shine that light brighter
and brighter through our union with God
and Our Lady, through our union with the Holy Eucharist which enlightens us
makes us light, makes us shining bright, makes us on
fire with love for God and for the world
and for our brothers and sisters who we want to save
and help to find salvation as we hope to have
find salvation and to maintain the salvation that God has
given to us in our state of grace
so we are to walk through the world, walk through with a
brighter light into the world. So this feast
underlines that truth, strengthens it and
renews it and refreshes it in
our hearts today and
so as always let's unite ourselves to Our Lady today so that she can make us a
brighter shining light, she will purify us more
and more from sin and selfishness in our own will
and so that we will do God's will in imitation of her
and Our Lord doing the will of His Father.
Amen.