Three Examples of Trust

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“Behold this child is destined for the Fall and Rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.” It’s often hard to know who we can trust. We know that some people have good intentions, but they’re weak and they don’t follow through. Or sometimes they make mistakes in what they tell us or oftentimes people can deceive us, and we’ve experienced a lot of that in our society.  Even, like with the COVID, people who seem to be national authorities, even international authorities, but saying very misguided things, things which caused a lot of damage. And there’s a crisis in our Church too. A lot of people wonder who can we trust in the Church, with terrible abuses that we’ve experienced in the Church. And as Catholics, we want to trust what is coming out of the Vatican, but there’s been a lot of problems with that too. And so it’s hard to know who we can trust. And you’re coming out to this little mission and was saying that the Lord is telling us to do things, and it’s hard to know whether to trust that also. So in this dilemma of who can we trust, that’s a very important question to know who to trust. I think this feast today, of the Presentation, gives us great examples, three great examples of who we can trust. In the difficult times that we’re living. One is kind of surprising, and it’s the example that we see from the little baby Jesus at 40 days old. We know that little babies tend to be very trusting, but here there’s something even much more than that. This is not just a little baby, but it’s God Himself, and God Himself who has chosen to become a little child and trust Himself to His mother and trust Himself becoming a child of Mary, conceived in her, in becoming her tiny, little child. And so here we see that what Jesus, the first thing He does as He comes into the world, following the plan of His father, is to become the little child of Mary, the little baby of Mary. And that’s something we, a lot of people, might not even notice, but there’s nothing, and certainly this, there’s nothing by chance. And God, there’s nothing that God needs to do. He’s completely free. Nobody asked you if you wanted to be born or who you wanted to be your mother. But this is God Himself, completely sovereign. So He’s everything. He’s completely free. And so it’s His divine choice to become the child of Mary. And so in that hidden act, there’s such an example for us of what so many saints like St Louis De Montfort and St John Paul II have talked about, the grace of entrusting ourselves, following Jesus. Because Jesus calls us to follow Him. And the first thing He does on coming into the world is entrust Himself to our Blessed Mother. So if we want to follow Jesus, we should entrust ourselves to Him, to His mother. And a lot of people are afraid of that. A lot of our protestant brothers and sisters, because they think it’s gonna take them away from Jesus. But what we see, we see it’s Jesus Himself who gives us that example. And we had the gospel a couple weeks ago about the wedding of Cana, and what Mary says to the servant. She doesn’t say, do whatever I tell you, she says, “Do whatever He tells you.” So when we entrust ourselves to her, when we consecrate ourselves to her, she leads us to Jesus. And so the spiritual battle is very difficult. One of the most practical things we could do – and is accessible for everybody, it’s not just for saints, it’s for all of us sinners – one of the most practical things we can do is to entrust ourselves to our Blessed Mother. No matter what our struggles are, no matter what our sins are, for she, she’s anxious and with open arms, waiting for each one of us, because she loves all of us. But the more we entrust ourselves to her, the more, as she spoke at Fatima, of the consecration to the Immaculate Heart, the more she can act powerfully in our life. And in my own life when I was a freshman at Notre Dame University, a university which is precisely consecrated to her. And when you see those photos, like you know, they’ll suggest the national championship and Notre Dame didn’t do so well. But when a lot of times, when they show them the pictures of Notre Dame, that the central image is the beautiful golden dome in the middle, which has the image this the statue of our Blessed Mother above it. And so I was there for my freshman year, and I had a very unexpected and powerful experience of our Blessed Mother, which led to making the act of consecration to her. And that was really a real turning point in my life. It got me into all the trouble I’m in now, a real turning point in my life.  I took a year off of the university. In fact, I never went back. And I ended up going to France and joining a religious community and so forth. And it kind of set in motion this whole thing. But that’s an act which all of us can do. And I know many of us are familiar with that, but we can always renew it. And so enter more deeply into that spirit of entrusting ourselves, like Jesus to Mary, so that she can lead us to Jesus. So that’s the first point, the second point we see in Simeon and Anna, who trust in the Holy Spirit. I was talking last week about the Anawin, the poor and humble. And so they’re great examples of that. These persons who have been both. They’re both elderly. So the first example is a little baby, and now this is persons at the very other end of their life, very elderly who have had a long and patient wait. And it says in the few lines that it gives us about Simeon, listen how much St Luke emphasizes the Holy Spirit. He says, “this man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, awaiting the consolation of the people of God.” Just like we’re waiting now for the consolation of God’s people. And it says, “the Holy Spirit was upon him.” So this was a person especially open to the Holy Spirit and especially responsive. And then it says, “it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.” So the Holy Spirit had given him this inspiration, and he was open to it. He was believing in it. Because a lot of times the Holy Spirit inspires, and we ignore or stifle His inspirations. But this is an example of a person who is attentive and responsive to the Holy Spirit. And then it says, So, that’s the second message mentioned in that. Then it says, “He came in the Spirit.” So, in the spirit, so the Holy Spirit had revealed to him. We don’t know how long before he would not see death, before he had seen the Christ. And now the Holy Spirit inspires him to come into the temple. And we don’t know exactly what form that took, but some inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and He responds so he knows how to do two things. Well, there’s a couple things here we see that he believes that God can inspire him, and he knows how to recognize the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he responds to it. So those are three key things. He believes that God can do it. A lot of people don’t believe that God still guides people today, but Simeon did, and not only did he believe, but he knew how to recognize it. Some people think well, who knows? You know? How can I tell you? Because it does take, it takes discernment to know, because there’s also the devil who tries to confuse us, and there’s also our own thoughts. So it does take discernment and spiritual sensitivity and maturity to be able to discern. But Simeon was able to discern. He didn’t just say, Oh, I had this crazy idea going to temple, but I don’t know why I would do that. He could discern that it was from the Lord. And some people don’t believe that anybody can discern. Well, I don’t want to go on too long, but which I always do anyway. But yesterday, I was talking about how it was in June of 2023, the reading at Mass with the community about Abraham, when it said Abraham was called by God to leave his country and so forth, I began sensing that that had a special meaning for us, that God was calling us now to take this big step of leaving behind the situation we were in, which was a more hidden situation, and now beginning to publish His messages. And so that didn’t come like it wasn’t a message. It was something pretty subtle. And so I thought the Lord was saying it, but I couldn’t be sure. So I talked to our community. I talked to them because I felt it was important that they’d be involved in that discernment. And we took time. We took time to discern it, took months to discern it, but we believe that the Holy Spirit was saying that. So that’s a key point – and what we’ve sensed is that a lot of people have told us with the messages, they’ve told us that when they read the messages, they could sense right away that it was from the Lord. They could just sense it. I mean, some people can’t, some people just ignore the messages and so forth. But we’ve heard from a number of people, sometimes people from far away, who have contacted us saying that just reading the messages, they could sense it was from the Holy Spirit. And I mentioned that example not long ago of a guy; he called himself a hobo living under a bridge in Virginia, but he came across the messages and just felt he had to come and visit. So we’re experiencing so many examples of people right now connected with the mission who are sensing; and some people tell us that when they get the messages, it corresponds to things that they’ve been sensing from the Lord for some time. And so I think these are some examples here of how the Holy Spirit continues to inspire. And so Simeon was able to perceive what other people didn’t. You know, so many people were in Jerusalem at that time. There are a lot of other people in the temple. There’s even a priest who was performing the ceremony. So many people were there, but they didn’t notice anything. They just thought this was just one more poor young couple, like there were so many of. And so they didn’t notice anything. But Simeon and then Anna, because of their openness to the Holy Spirit and their trust in the Holy Spirit, they were able to perceive what was happening. And so Simeon, it doesn’t say that Simeon had this great, you know, like Jesus, the little baby Jesus, was transformed in glory, and he saw a great light or anything. It doesn’t say that he had any visual manifestation, and yet, the interior grace of the Holy Spirit made him capable. And so what does he say? He gets this prophetic word. He says, “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation.” All he’s seen is a little baby, a poor little baby. And yet, “my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, to the nations and the glory of your people, Israel.” And so it’s not something visible, no one else has seen it, but it’s this interior inspiration of the Holy Spirit which is revealing to him what is hidden in the baby Jesus. And so that’s the example of trusting in the Holy Spirit, trusting what the Holy Spirit had revealed to him a long time ago, and then, then being trusting in this inspiration, the Holy Spirit he was called to go to the temple, and then trusting in this, the Holy Spirit reveals to him the presence of the Messiah and this little baby. And so that’s the second point, trusting in the Holy Spirit. And the third point of trust is the example that we have of Mary and Joseph. And so what they come to do, they come to entrust or offer their child there in the temple and trust in this child, which is their treasure, the love of their life, the greatest treasure that they have. They’re entrusting Him to the Father. You know that they’re not being possessive of wanting like, which is so such a tendency in us, when God gives us a grace to want to be possessive and to hang on to it. And also, they’re not paralyzed by fear saying they’re trying to also hold on just by fear, but they’re offering, confiding, abandoning their child, their treasure, to the Father. And by doing that, they’re confiding Him to the Father’s will, to the Father’s plan, recognizing that their child is part of this great plan of salvation, and entrusting Him to the Father. And that’s challenging. It’s challenging for parents to entrust their children to God and also, like in this world in which we know that it’s so difficult for young people, and young people are so attacked by the evil one, and so many cases are confused in these times and wounded by all that’s going on. And so that’s very discouraging for parents. And so this is a call to entrust their children to God’s mercy, to our Lord of mercy, and for all of us to entrust our own lives to the Father. And that’s not easy, again with all that’s going on in our world. But that’s what the Holy Spirit is leading us to, and trust ourselves and entrust those we love, to the Father. And again, to take just our own example here at the mission, when we felt called to take this step, that was a very, very difficult step. We had been working for our little mission for over 20 some years, and we realized that this was a step which would be very, very controversial. A lot of people would see it as us kind of going off the deep end. And so it was really kind of just saying, Lord, we think you’re asking us to do this, and this is going to be very difficult, and it’s going to cause a lot of problems, but we entrust this mission, our mission, our own vocation, we entrust it all to you, and so abandoning ourselves to God’s plan, to God’s mercy, to God’s providence. And so that’s the third example we see in with St Joseph and our Blessed Mother, is entrusting ourselves, abandoning ourselves and those we love and our plans and our projects, to our Father. And so in conclusion, these three acts of trust, following the example of Jesus, and trusting ourselves, to our Blessed Mother, a consecration to her Immaculate Heart so that she can help us follow Jesus. And the second, trusting in the Holy Spirit, being attentive to His inspirations and signs, trusting in Him. And the third, trusting in God, our Father, for ourselves and for our loved ones, trusting in this loving will when so much seems to contradict it. And so we can do that right now, in this Mass and especially in the moment that’s coming up in just a few minutes. The offeratory, it’s an opportunity to entrust ourselves with our blessed mother’s help, inspired by the Holy Spirit, following our Lord Jesus, and trust ourselves and those whom we love to the Father and offer all to him in this holy Mass. Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 2:22-40