Looking Back

In this realm of time, for us human beings, we see that the time we live in is broken up into pieces and measured for us. It’s different than eternity, where there is no beginning and there is no end—only the eternal now.

With this, we are able to look back, celebrate, and take account for things—the good and the bad.I would like for us to approach every mass, but this mass in particular, as an opportunity first to give thanks to God for his faithfulness to us this year & as an opportunity to reflect on the moments we can be more faithful in the upcoming year.

Today we celebrate the wonderful moment where 8 days after Jesus’ birth, as was the custom and law of God, for the male children to be presented in the temple to remember God’s covenant with Abraham and bring them into the family of God.

One thing that Simeon says that is quite striking is that Jesus this child, “is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel” It’s quite strange of a saying, but it’s true. This rising and falling is about the judgment of God. However, it’s not so much God who judges us. But it is we who judge ourselves. The judgment is our reaction to Jesus and the commands of God.And when looking at the year, you might be thinking 2023 was not a good year for me.

It might have been filled with different and unexpected challenges.

The things we might have hoped to have changed are the same as they were.

Whatever it might be, we might even begin to believe that 2023 was NOT good for me and I hope 2024 does better for me.We speak about the year and the time as if A YEAR has a mind and will of it’s own. We speak almost as if God is removed from the situation. If we say 2023 was bad to me, then ultimately we are saying, GOD was bad to me.

What we are missing is that God is the Lord of this time and age. All things that happen, the good and the bad, are part of God’s will. If for us it is experienced as tough and difficult, in God’s providence and mind, he allows it for our own good. We forget how God’s hand is part of it all.

With God we either surrender or we are at war with him. We fall when God is not part of our plans, life, and considerations.

God surely created you without your choice and will but he won’t save you without your free choice.

We rise, when all that you do, plan, and have in your life is placed as Jesus was, at the altar of the Lord. Mary and Joseph had received Jesus, their child, knowing this child was given to me, but he is not mine. They presented him in the temple with the mindset, “Lord you gave him to me, take him as you will.”So in the same way, we present ourselves to the Lord in this new year HE has given us. Presenting him what we have, acknowledging he has given it all, presenting him also what we take full ownership of, our sins, knowing that our past is covered in his mercy, the present in his love, and the future to be held in his providence.