Presentation of the Lord
I’d like to begin my homily with this short prayer of consecration: May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love, and joy of God’s presence and not a moment without the entire surrender of myself as a vessel for Him to fill full of His Spirit and His love.”
I started off with this prayer because today’s feast has something to do with consecration. We celebrate today the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, recalling the consecration of the Baby Jesus by Joseph and Mary. Because the infant Jesus was consecrated to God, his whole life and even his suffering and death were consecrated to God – for our sake.
The feast we celebrate poses these questions to each of us: Are you consecrated to the Lord? Are you aware that your life belongs to the Lord and that you are living on borrowed time? How do you make your life meaningful and worthy of belonging to the Lord? How do you make use of the time consecrated to the Lord?
Well, we have to confront ourselves with these questions, in one way or another, sooner than we think. We need to seriously think of how to live a life that is truly consecrated to the Lord. It certainly includes consecrating everything we are, everything we have, and everything we do – work, business, career, plan, activity, leisure, etc.
To be consecrated to the Lord basically means to be holy? So, today’s feast also reminds us of our fundamental calling, our basic vocation: the call to holiness.
A saint is someone in whom Christ lives again. A saint is someone who makes it easier for others to believe in God. A saint is someone who lets God’s light shine through. Based on these descriptions or definitions of a saint, each of us is called to be a saint, called to be holy. Christ must live again in us; we must make it easier for others to believe in God; we must let God’s light shine through us. This is what being holy and being a saint is all about.
St. Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians (1:3), tells us: “God chose us in him before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.” May we live always trying to be holy in God’s sight.
Parokya ni Osong 