UNLESS YOU BECOME LIKE CHILDREN

26 February 2019 (A day late. Internet problems)

UNLESS YOU BECOME LIKE CHILDREN… (Mark 9: )

‘Unless you become like little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven’.  It is as though in our earliest days we were people of purity, simplicity and truth.  As time went on we learnt the hard way that the world was hostile and we had to either conquer it or defend ourselves from it.  We took up attitudes towards others and the world that we instinctively judged would help us survive. But in doing so we compromised with our own true worth and that of others.  Jesus does not want us to go back to being children but he does call us to recognise the gifts and values we were born with and that we even lived for a while.  He calls us to recognise the authentic gifts that make up the lives of each of us and to develop them and use them with purity for the good of others.  This may sound very theoretical but I have just been reading the life of Thérèse Vanier and she lived this out in practice in a life totally dedicated for others. 

OVERCOME WITH AWE

25 February 2019

OVERCOME WITH AWE.  (Mark 9: 14-29)

‘Immediately they saw him the whole crowd was overcome with awe’. Why this sudden comment in the midst of the ongoing narrative?  Jesus has just come down the mountain of the Transfiguration but only Peter, James and John had the glimpse of him in glory.  There was something about Jesus that attracted people.  We can reflect because we know who he was.  They could only say, in another place, ‘God has visited his people’ but even so they hardly knew what that meant. But we do. God walked among them and they could not help realising that there was something ‘awesome’ about him, something so attractive that crowds came from everywhere to see him.  What the Church, that is us, does today, in a no doubt faulty way, is to be that presence.

FREEDOM AND MERCY

FREEDOM AND MERCY

Thomas Merton was a New Zealander born in France, who was educated in England and lived his life as monk in America.  People who choose to be monks desire to withdraw from the world and search for God in silence and contemplation. There are a number of monasteries in Africa where men and women follow this way of life.   But Merton’s was not a hidden life; he became widely known because of his writings and his pursuit of racial justice and peace.  He opposed the arms race and all wars, especially in Viet Nam in the 1960s.

What struck people at the time was the personal way in which he described his search for God and his attraction to the Catholic Church which eventually led him into a monastery.  He lost his mother when he was six and moved house and country constantly as his father’s work took him from place to place. He was still a teenager when his father died and he set out to explore the meaning of life using whatever help he could get. He spent a wild year at an English university in which he fathered a child but at about the same time he began to discover the action of God’s grace in his life.

He has been compared to Augustine of Hippo (modern day Tunisia) who also lived a wild directionless youth but who also powerfully felt the inrush of grace in his life which he describes in his Confessions. Both men came to discover that freedom, touched by divine mercy, released their energies into highly creative ways. ‘Mercy’ is the word we use for the power to channel a person’s confused longings into something creative and positive.  We associate the word with God but a parent, a teacher, any kind of counsellor or friend can show mercy to another. It is the most beautiful quality of ‘e-ducat-ion’, leading a person out of dark confusion into the clarity of daylight.

In the Old Testament description of the rivalry between Saul and David there is a moment when David has the king in his mercy.  All he has to do was pierce him through with his lance.  But David restrains himself.  After all, Saul is ‘the Lord’s anointed’.  David showed mercy but it was a mercy based on fear and calculation. ‘If I kill him now what will be the consequences?  Better to wait!’

The mercy of Jesus is unconditional. There is no such calculating. ‘Love your enemies!’ Full stop!  ‘Lend without any hope of return’. ‘Give and there will be gifts for you; a full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.’ The images pour out. This kind of mercy or compassion will change the world.  It will drive out fear.  It will create new people who will not be afraid to use their gifts and energies to create a better world. This is where mercy touches freedom.  This is what Thomas Merton and Augustine experienced.  It is available for everyone.  It can change our world.

24 February 2019              Sunday 7 C

1 Samuel 26:2…23            1 Corinthians 15 45-49                    Luke 6:27-38

      

IF ANYONE WANTS

22 February 2019, St Peter

‘IF ANYONE WANTS’ (Mark 8:34-9:1)

‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let them renounce their own will and take up their cross and follow me’.  There you have it: the heart of the Christian life.  What this means for me is evident at each moment of my life if I can become sensitive to what the Spirit is calling me to.  I spontaneously react to people and events and to my own moods. And maybe I do well.  But sometimes I have to ‘educate’ my spontaneous reactions so that they are in line with this call to ‘renounce’ myself.  This is the hard part! Today is one of the feasts of St Peter.  The gospels give us quite a lot of information about his journey from wild impulses to a deep following of Jesus.  We also want to pray for his successor Francis who, with the bishops in Rome, are addressing the Church’s failure to act transparently and justly in the matter of the abuse of people.  

A COVENANT WITH THE EARTH

21 February 2019

‘A COVENANT WITH THE EARTH’. (genesis 9:1-13)

After the first humans fell into evil, scripture tells us, Abel was murdered and there was wickedness over the earth. God decided to destroy his world and start again – like a potter.  But, we were told yesterday, he regretted his decision and today we hear of a ‘covenant’ with Noah and with the earth.  We can see this as an ancient bible story with little relevance to us or we can see it as sharply topical.  We are aware we need to make a ‘covenant’ with the earth today.  We are destroying it and in the process destroying ourselves. We have to change our thinking from seeing the earth as only there for us to exploit regardless.  Or we can see it as our home – a home that needs care, maintenance, with which we can have an ongoing ‘dialogue’.  

PEOPLE LOOK LIKE TREES

20 February 2019

‘PEOPLE LOOK LIKE TREES’. (Mark 8:22-26)

The religions of Asia call it ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’. It is a state of awareness beyond the normal level on which we live.  It is a breakthrough into seeing things as they really are, seeing reality as God sees it.  Mark describes the only time Jesus ‘fails’ to work a miracle.  They bring a blind man to him and Jesus goes through a process of healing.  But at the end the man does not see clearly. People look like trees though they are walking about.  So Jesus lays his hand on him again and this time he sees everything clearly.  Mark’s purpose is to show that ‘seeing’ takes time.  The work of God in us does not happen immediately. We are to return again and again to the task of awakening.

BEWARE OF THE YEAST OF THE PHARISEES

19 February 2019

‘BEWARE OF THE YEAST OF THE PHARISEES.’ (Mark 8:14-21)

What is this yeast? Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven was like yeast.  But here is the opposite yeast; that approach to life that creeps into our way of thinking and acing unnoticed. What is it for me? Pope Francis calls us to discernment, to looking closely at what influences me.  Sometimes I hardly know.  We encourage each other to a moment each day of examining our consciousness, those spontaneous movements that influence us.  Some are good. Some not so.   

CAIN WAS VERY ANGRY

18 February 2019

‘CAIN WAS VERY ANGRY.’ (Genesis 4:1-15)

But what did he do with his anger?  Did he ask himself, ‘Why am I angry?  What actually has my brother Abel done to arouse my anger? We both made our offerings.  His was accepted.  Mine wasn’t.  Is that his fault? When I think about it I realise I am just annoyed that I have been found out.  My offering was half-hearted and calculated and it was not welcomed.  His was made in simplicity and singlemindedness. And his was welcomed.  Why can I not just learn the lesson from this and do better next time?  Ah, no!  It is too hard.  I will take my revenge on him.  I will prove my worth.  I will show him who is better.  I will kill him.’ We can see it all happening but then we hear of God’s reaction.  He is full of mercy towards Cain and promises to protect him and give him room to change his way of thinking.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, describes in a way understandable to the people of the time how the earth and men and women came to be. The opening words describe a stark contrast between darkness and light, night and day.  “Darkness covered the face of the deep … and God said, ‘let there be light!’” This original and physical description of the planet we inhabit – that it is one of darkness and light - is as indisputable as that we are made up of flesh and blood.  And this stark contrast extends beyond our physical to our moral make-up.

When Jesus announced the good news in different venues of Galilee he was saying a second time, ‘let there be light!’ This was bad news for the land owners who had dispossessed the poor and all who had enriched themselves at the expense of others. ‘Woe to you who have your fill now, you will be hungry.’  This warning was for those drawn by darkness into easy money and who locked away their conscience in their bottom drawer, while they enjoyed the sweetness of power and wealth.  This warning was for those enticed and seduced by what obscures the light.

But that is not where Jesus begins.  His first words are for the poor.  He tells them they are blessed. This must be one of the most misunderstood sayings of Jesus.  It was interpreted by Karl Marx, for example, as a soporific, a drug to ease the pain of being poor: ‘You are poor and suffering now.  But one day you will be happy in heaven.  Meanwhile bear your suffering patiently.’  We have to admit the Church has often preached patience and she has had an instinctive horror of change.  In the nineteenth century she refused to admit there was anything positive in the French Revolution with its struggle for the rights of men and women.

But by the mid-twentieth century the Church had come to value the affirmation of human dignity embedded in the struggles for freedom in every part of the world. The Vatican Council (1962-65) recognised that secular society had much to teach the followers of Jesus.  The Church reflected deeply and saw that poverty and oppression were not ‘the will of God’ but perversions of God’s plan from the beginning.  And she began to encourage a search for development and a struggle for justice that would give flesh to this teaching.

So what are we to make of Jesus’ words to the poor: ‘You are blessed’?  Matthew helps us out when he adds ‘in spirit’.  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ and the teaching here is about freedom and detachment from wealth, power and status.  You may have these things but you don’t lose a night’s sleep if you lose them. They are not part of who you are so, if you fall on bad times, you remain peaceful and joyful.

But Luke sticks to his blunt saying: ‘Blessed are the poor’.  There is a quality about being poor that puts you on a fast track to God.  Think of Bartimaeus, the blind man of Jericho, or the widow who made her tiny offering at the temple.  Jesus heaped praise on her.  These two knew their complete dependence on God and it freed them to do amazing things.  They were ‘lights in the encircling gloom’.

Our age pushes us to be ever more ‘independent’ and self-reliant. We can see the positive side of these.  But, if we reflect, we may conclude that it is sometimes hard to see what is ‘light’ and what is ‘darkness’.  Perhaps that is why Pope Francis is so keen to teach us discernment.

17 February 2019        Sunday 6C

Jeremiah 17:5-8          1 Corinthians 15:12 … 20        Luke 6: 17… 26     

I WILL MAKE YOU ENEMIES OF ONE ANOTHER

16 February 2019

‘I WILL MAKE YOU ENEMIES OF ONE ANOTHER.’ (Genesis 3: 9-24)

In the ‘judgement’ that God pronounces on the evil spirit, on the woman and on the man there is no mention of an amnesty for the fault and going back to the state they were in before.  They will now have to live out the consequences of their decision.  This is symbolised in the sufferings of childbirth for the woman and the resistance of the soil to man’s efforts to harness it to grow food.  And that has been the struggle: we live out the consequences of our personal decisions – good or bad – and the decisions that society makes. We cannot avoid that enmity between us and the forces that want to trap and oppress us.  We are enemies.  And our life is a battle against these forces which we find within us and outside us.  

14 February 2019, Cyril and Methodius

‘I WILL MAKE HIM A HELPER.’ (Genesis 2: 18-125)

The way Genesis tells it man was first created and then there is this search for a ‘helper’.  God creates ‘woman’ as his partner and equal.  They will discover who they are in relationship to one another.  In today’s gospel (Mark7:24-30) we see a pagan woman showing faith in Jesus in a way that the disciples could not match.  They were in a ‘daze’ but she went straight to the heart of the matter.  The Church hierarchy has traditionally been dominated by men. But now there is a search for a way of doing what clearly has to be done; welcoming women into leadership roles. May this be done in a calm and peaceful way!

THE MAN BECAME A LIVING BEING

13 February 2019

‘THE MAN BECAME A LIVING BEING.’ (Genesis 2: 4 …17)

The author of the book of Genesis delights to describe the work of God in creating the world and most of all the beginning of life. I heard of a man recently who, after many years, emerged from prison when it was finally proved that he was innocent all along.  Was he bitter? All he would say is, ‘I am glad to be alive.’  That is the great gift and, whoever we are, we can always try to live life to the full, relishing each moment and making it fruitful in our love and service of one another.

And let me share a Valentine message that was sent to me by a friend in the Philippines.  It was written by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, in The Monastic Life:

Ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, once asked his teacher about the place of friendship in the spiritual journey. “Master, is friendship half of the spiritual life?” he asked. And the teacher responded, “Nay, Ananda, friendship is the whole of the spiritual life.”

There are times when it seems that so much has been written about love that there is no more to be said about it. And, worse, sometimes it seems that so much that has been written about love that is pure drivel—unattained and unattainable. Or volumes are written about sexual manipulation without a word about the fact that good sex, holy sex, requires a good relationship. Or pure theory of a theological kind talks about “loving” God when I have yet to understand human love, let alone the divine. But love is none of those things, alone and entirely. Love is far more meaningful than that.
 
Love is something learned only by the long, hard labour of life. It is sometimes over before we’ve even known we ever had it. We sometimes destroy it before we appreciate it. We often have it and simply take it for granted.
 
Every love, whatever happens to it in the long run, teaches us more about ourselves, our needs, our limitations, and our self-centeredness than anything else we can ever experience. As Aldous Huxley wrote: “There isn’t any formula or method. You learn by loving.”
 
But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we live long enough to grow into it in such a way that because of it we come to recognize the value of life. As the years go by, we come to love flowers and cats and small infants and old ladies and life on the dock and the one person in life who knows how hot we like our coffee.
 
We learn enough about love to allow things to slip away and ourselves to melt into the God whose love made all of it possible. Sometimes we even find a love deep enough, gentle enough, tender enough to detach us from the foam and frills of life, all of which hold us captive to things that cannot satisfy.  Sometimes we live long enough to see the face of God in another. Then, in that case, we have loved.
 
The poets and storytellers across time have told us about the dimensions of love that last. The poet Rumi wrote:
 
From myself I am copper,
through You, friend, I am gold.
From myself I’m a stone, but
through You I am a gem.
 

  

GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE

12 February 2019

‘GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE.’ (Genesis 1:20 -2:4)

There it is stated emphatically at the outset of the Bible: God’s great project was to make human beings who would be like him in every possible way.  And the earth and the universe were all made for them.  If they made the right decisions they would experience intense joy and fulfilment, so deep they cannot be described.  But there was huge risk.  They might make wrong decisions and mess up the whole project.  Well, we know what they (we) did and we live day by day caught in this battle of our own making, struggling to get it right. Meanwhile millions suffer and our common home is under threat of burning up.

PEACE FLOWING LIKE A RIVER.

11 February 2019, Our Lady of Lourdes

‘PEACE FLOWING LIKE A RIVER.’ (Isaiah 66:10-14)

The appearance of Mary, our Lady, to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France, in 1858, was a hidden quiet event and the little girl had some difficulty persuading people it really happened.  But, in time, people came to Lourdes and found healing, occasionally even physical, and discovered it as a place of peace and hope.  Bernadette suffered later as she wrestled with the contrast between the hardships of daily life and the glimpse of the reality as seen by God which she had been able to witness. Underlying it was the confidence generated by that glimpse which, in different ways, comes to each of us.

THE GOSPEL MUST GROW FEET

THE GOSPEL MUST GROW FEET

Forty two years ago a priest and his two companions – one in his seventies, one in his teens - were killed.  Twelve bullets, coming from all angles, hit Fr Rutilio Grande on 12 March 1977 as he was returning home to his village in El Paisnal, El Salvador.   It was the culmination of a life in which he had constantly sought to understand how, in his words, the gospel must ‘grow little feet’ in his land.

Born in 1928 into a poor family where his parents divorced when he was still very young, he was brought up to believe that suffering and poverty were unavoidable in this life and we should hope for happiness only in the next. But his coming to maturity coincided with the profound changes that shook the Catholic Church in the middle of the last century.

The Second Vatican Council was the climax of this change but even before it Rutilio was affected by the questioning of tradition sparked by the discovery of what the sources actually said – something often long buried by the weight of that tradition. One example was liturgy.  For centuries it was conducted in Latin, a language few understood, and so people who attended Church were virtually spectators at an event conducted by professionals, the clergy. The Lumen Vitae Institute in Louvain, Belgium, where Rutilio went to study in 1963, taught him the principle that liturgy is for everyone and all should participate as much as possible.        

This may not sound a radical discovery but when he began to apply this principle more widely it became revolutionary.  The social and political conditions in El Salvador were oppressive and the majority were trapped in a system where a few, 1 per cent, of the people enjoyed power and wealth at the expense of the many.  The Church connived in this and, as mentioned already, taught people to suffer patiently and look forward to the life to come.

So Rutilio came to understand that the liturgy was only a mirror of what was happening in real life and the Council awakened his conscience to see that the role of the Church must now be different and she must become involved in the struggle for justice if she were to be an authentic and credible teacher of the faith.  The Latin American bishops met at Medellin in Colombia in 1968 and made their own the teaching of the Council.  From now on the Church was to be at the side of the poor – not out ahead of them or above them ‘in the clouds’ to use another phrase of Rutilio.

But how could this happen?  If Louvain, Rome and Medellin were all crucial influences on Rutilio there was a fourth and last.  In the early 1970s he went to Quito in Ecuador where he learnt the pedagogy of Paulo Freire.  In a word, this meant that the people themselves had to learn how to become agents of their own change.  They had to meet in their small communities and study the message of Jesus in the gospels.  What was the ‘good news’ that Jesus brought, not only to the woman at the well in the year 30, but to the campesinos of El Paisnal in El Salvador in the year 1975?

Rutilio integrated all the influences he had experienced into a coherent mission of ‘conscientization’ leading the people to discover their own power to change things peacefully; things did not have to be as they were.  It was not the will of God for them to be poor and to suffer.  Quite the opposite!  He wants us to have a dignified and joyful life here on earth as a way of preparing for the fullness of life that will follow later.

The rich and powerful landowners saw all this as a threat to their privileged life and they determined to get rid of this ‘troublesome priest’. They succeeded in killing him but their deed lit a fire in the heart of Oscar Romero and, even more significantly, Jorge Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis.  The eyes of Rutilio Grande and Oscar Romero were opened and they saw clearly what Jesus wanted them to do.  And they did it. 

Something similar happened to Peter though he did not have the experience Louvain, Rome, Medellin and Quito.  He just saw a huge quantity of fish and he got the message.  He was so awed he burst out, ‘Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.  For he and all who were with him were amazed’.   

10 February 2019        Sunday 5 C

Isaiah 6:1…8               1 Corinthians 15:1…11           Luke 5:1-11     

HE LIKED TO LISTEN TO HIM.

8 February 2019 Josephine Bakhita

‘HE LIKED TO LISTEN TO HIM.’ (Mark 6:14-29)

What a miserable situation!  Herod ‘likes to listen’ to John the Baptist but then he goes and cuts his head off.  He is mildly attracted to the man just as Pilate later would be to Jesus, but it made no difference when the weight of public opinion – ‘what would people think?’ – came into play.  So he compromises with his own conscience.  We know the papers are full of similar stories.  The question is what do I do? There are ideas and ways of acting that I like and approve of.  But when they touch how I should lead my life?  There is the rub.

TAKE NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY

7 February 2019

‘TAKE NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY.’ (Mark 6:7-13)

How opposed to our way of thinking!  We plan and try to think of everything we will need. And, of course, we are right.  We have to.  But Jesus is talking about an attitude.  Do we think we can do everything if we can plan every detail? At the end of the day there is no guarantee. A surgeon knows that.  They can take every precaution but ultimately it is not in their power.  They cannot say for certainty. And so it is for everything. There is that gap which we cannot predict.  We call it trust.  When I have done everything I can to make sure something goes right at the end of the day I have to trust – not luck, not fate – but an all-loving God.   

‘WHERE DID HE GET ALL THIS?’

6 February 2019. The Martyrs of Japan in the 1590s and of Zimbabwe in the 1970s

‘WHERE DID HE GET ALL THIS?’ (Mark 6:1-6)

The people of Nazareth were outraged when they heard Jesus speaking a wisdom way ahead of anything they knew.  They were not open to the message because they were jealous that one of theirs should have gone so far ahead of them.  He stood out.  But he only did so to invite them to change their ways and reach beyond the contented way of life they were used to.  Martyrs of all times – and today we remember martyrs in Japan and Zimbabwe – step outside the accepted ways of their contemporaries and make a stand. Jesus’ contemporaries, people who thought they knew him, wondered, ‘where did he get all this?’ A good question!  Where do we get the courage to be different?   

IF I BUT TOUCH

5 February 2019. Agatha

IF I BUT TOUCH (Mark 5:21-43)

A woman makes her way through the crowd, ignoring all conventions, and reaches out and touches the cloak of Jesus.  She is healed immediately.  As in many places, Mark draws us to the heart of the matter.  A person rises above all her problems and the social expectations around her and reaches out to Jesus and ‘immediately’ – how often Mark uses that word – she is cured.  All we have to do is ponder the scene and all the reasons why we are hesitant.  Why do we not pay attention to that decisive call? What are these excuses we make?

WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?

4 February 2019. John de Britto

WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME? (Mark 5:1-10)

It is striking that as soon as Jesus lands in the country of the Gerasenes a man with multiple evil spirits recognises immediately who he is and the power he has.  A dialogue ensues and the man is freed of the spirits but it is all too much for the locals.  Jesus’ presence is just too threatening for them and they ‘implored’ Jesus to leave.  It is a dramatic incident revealing the power of God but also the reluctance of the people to come to close to Jesus.  He might make them change their ways radically just as this possessed man is changed radically and ‘went off and spread throughout the Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him.  And everyone was amazed.’   

THE ONE AND THE MANY

THE ONE AND THE MANY

The problem of ‘the One and the Many’ is an ancient philosophical one which seeks to understand the unifying element behind all the diversity we experience. For our ancestors in medieval times God was the source of all that exists and the only problem was how created things share in his being.  Many today, in our secular age, do not believe in God and so they seek some other explanation for the origin and existence of ‘the many’.

I only mention this issue because it can be seen as the broad background for a more pressing interpretation of the relationship between the one and the many today.  I refer to the relationship between the individual person and the community in which they live. African writers remind us that Ubuntu teaches the direct opposite of the rational western concept of individualism: ‘I think, therefore I am’.  Ubuntu says, ‘I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.’ ‘I am’ because I am a member of a group.  Pressing the concept further we might say: if I step outside the group I no longer am.

At first sight this community consciousness is admirable and at its best the community cares for all its members.  It provided a ‘welfare state’ long before the concept was used to describe modern developed societies.  The problem is it takes unusual courage and risk for the individual in the community to think or act outside the community norms.  Nazareth in the time of Jesus was probably just such a tightly knit community and when he announced to them the coming of the Kingdom we are told they were enraged.  ‘Who does he think he is?  He is one of us. We know his parents and his brothers and sisters.’

Jesus replies, ‘no prophet is accepted in his own country.’ It was a threat to the community that ‘one’ of theirs should stand out from the ‘many’.  But we can quickly see that if individuals do not stand out and speak up nothing will ever change.  Somebody has to break the iron grip of custom and tradition when these paralyse a community or a whole country.  I suspect we have all had the experience, when a question is asked that carries consequences depending on how it is answered, where people look around the room to see what others think before they respond.  We bury ourselves in the group rather than saying or doing what we believe.

When God calls Jeremiah he charges him (he almost threatens him), ‘Do not be dismayed in their presence or in their presence I will make you dismayed.’  The call to speak and act as I believe I should is always going to be hard.  But there is no other way to make progress in our personal lives or in our politics.

3 February 2019          Sunday 4 C

Jeremiah 1:4…19        1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13      Luke 4:21-30

MY EYES HAVE SEEN

2 February 2019. The Presentation of the Lord

MY EYES HAVE SEEN (Luke 2:22-40)

From Samuel to Simeon there had been a great longing in the heart of every Jew for the appearance of the Messiah, the one who would liberate them – though they had little idea what ‘liberation’ meant.  Now he ‘suddenly appears’ (Malachy 3) in the temple, sealing the link between the promises given to Abraham and their fulfilment.  Simeon understands and he rejoices: ‘my eyes have seen it’.  Jesus was only six weeks old and had nothing to do with the arrangements for going to the temple, no more than we had if we were baptised as infants.  The adults saw to it. They knew all had to be ‘fulfilled’.  What they didn’t know was how it would be done. But Simeon knew a sword would pierce the soul of Mary.