The Gift of Due Worship – 4th Sunday In Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; February 2, 2025

A father, a mother, and a baby boy, not rich, not destitute, but poor and simple: perhaps the most representative and ordinary scene of human life in this world. It is also a scene that embodies all human hope and promise.

The particular historical scene, given us in today’s Gospel, is given us by God himself: it is the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They are showing their religious devotion, bringing the newborn to the Temple to give thanks to God and to offer sacrifice in accordance with the law of God.

Yet, this particular newborn is himself the very Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, who by becoming man has become the Lamb of God, the victim offered in sacrifice, and the High Priest and Mediator who will offer himself, his own Body and Blood on the Cross. He does this to redeem our life from sin, to purify our hearts, so that all the hope and promise of human life might be fulfilled in God. The Presentation in the Temple anticipates the sacrifice of the Cross.

Jesus is the sign that will be contradicted, the stone rejected by the builders that becomes the cornerstone.   (Mt 21:42; Ps 118[117]:22) He shared our flesh and blood so that through death he might destroy the one who had the power of death, the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.

The hope and promise can only be attained through the path of sacrifice to God. It is precisely in sacrifice that Christ is revealed as the light of revelation to the nations.

Christ came, then, to renew the covenant, to purify the hearts of believers, making them capable of offering due worship, restoring mankind thereby to its original purpose.

If we look to the beginning of creation, as narrated in Genesis, we can see that all of creation and all of life is a gift of God’s goodness. In the whole of the visible world, however, only man is capable of recognizing that goodness and giving thanks to the giver. In that sense man was created to be the priest of the visible world, joining his voice to the angelic choirs above and offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving on behalf of all the voiceless creatures.

The book of Daniel recounts how three young men, captives in Babylon, did just this when, refusing to bow down before the king’s idol, they were cast into a fiery furnace, but were protected from the flames by the angel of God. They sang in the midst of the flames: Bless the Lord, you angels of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever … bless the Lord, sun and moon, praise and exalt him above all forever and then passing through all the different phenomena of weather, through the changes of night and day, they reach to let the earth bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever; bless the Lord mountains and hills, praise and exalt him above all forever and then through the things that grow on the earth, the beasts wild and tame, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, they reach to bless the Lord, you sons of men, praise and exalt him above all forever. (Dan 3:37,40,52-53,60)

The Psalmist invites us to this praise when he sings: I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together! (Ps 34[33]:1-3)

Alas, God sees clearly when a people draws near with their mouth and honors him with their lips, while their hearts are far from him. (Is 29:13) Their hearts are far from God because they seek their own will, not his. (cf. Is 58:13; Mt 7:21-23) Their lives contradict the words of their mouths. That is indeed the condition of the man who does not live in Christ’s redemption, but beneath the sin of Adam.

When Christ drove the money changers from the temple, he declared, It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of thieves. (Mt 21:13) Adam was the first thief, stealing from God the glory that was his due. Adam had been created by God to be the high priest of the visible creation, but by his sin he sought his own glory rather than the glory of God; he became incapable of fulfilling his priestly purpose and rendered his descendants likewise incapable.

It does not do to say, God is everywhere, I can worship him wherever I please. We need a mediator.

Since the time of Adam it was no longer possible to simply offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; expiation for sin needed to become part of the offering of sacrifice. It is written: Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (He 9:22) Only Christ, the Son of God made man, was capable of offering adequate expiation, giving to us also the possibility of offering expiation through, with, and in him. Two turtledoves were offered on his behalf, but in reality he is the one who offered the two turtledoves, love of God and love of neighbor, given to God from purity of heart. So the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit [the dove] offered himself without blemish to God, purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (He 9:14)

St. Augustine wrote that “a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God’s sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing.” (City of God, X.6)

Through sacrifice we are consecrated to God, we belong to God, and we enter into communion with God, but all our sacrifices need to go to God by way of Jesus Christ, by way of the supreme and perfect sacrifice, the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ, the Son of God, is the fruit and full participation in the sacrifice realized on the altar.

After the sin of Adam, the way to union with God goes by way of the Cross of Christ, in which we must share; expiation makes sacrifice to be a painful thing, love gladly embraces the pain, seeking union with God, which is the greatest and lasting joy.

A father, mother, and newborn child reflect the reality of the Presentation when out of faith and religious devotion the child is brought to the Church to be baptized in Christ, given to God, consecrated to God, offered to God, in Christ. At the conclusion of the rite of baptism, the newly baptized child is brought before the altar because baptism destines him to participation in the holy sacrifice and communion. There before the altar the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father” is recited on his behalf.

In the Mass, the “Our Father” is located at the critical junction between the sacrifice and communion. The sacrifice is what enables us to stand before God, as our Father, in his Son, Jesus Christ. “Hallowed be thy name” summarizes the offering of the sacrifice; the coming of the kingdom is attained here and now in holy communion, as the fruit of the sacrifice; communion is what enables us to do God’s will, on earth as in heaven, not out of fear, but out of love; the middle petition of the “Our Father” is the petition for our daily bread, which above all is the “Bread of Life,” the Body of Christ received in holy communion; the final petitions seeks to remove all obstacles that would keep us from communion; thus we ask for forgiveness of sin, victory over temptation, and deliverance from evil.  

Sacrifice is painful most of all because it is painful to give up our own self-will and place our will with complete trust and abandon into the hands of God. Love, however, longs to give due worship to God. The offering of our own will to God, out of love, is what enable us to belong to him. Behold, those who are far from you shall perish … For me it is good to be united to God. (Ps 73[72]:29) That is true joy and that belonging to God in holy communion is what frees us from the egoism that poisons family life, ruins the hope of the father, mother, and child, and keeps it from fulfilling its promise.