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Sunday Homily, 2 February 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

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If we went into a Catholic church in Munich in the 1940s, we’d see the statues of Mary and Jesus wearing yellow armbands with the Star of David on them.  It’d be quite a sight, because usually the only worldly adornment we place on our statues is a crown and mantle.  But the statues also had a yellow armband, the same as those worn by Jews in Nazi Germany.


The Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal von Faulhaber, ordered that the yellow armbands be placed on the statues of Mary and Jesus throughout his diocese, because they too are Jewish.  Amazingly, the Gestapo didn’t order the removal of the armbands.  Some would say that was because they feared a Catholic uprising against the tyrannical regime.  Others might say that the Gestapo thought armbands on statues in fact served their perverted cause.

Munich's Cathedral, Frauenkirche, amidst the ruins
Munich's Cathedral, Frauenkirche, amidst the ruins

Whatever the Nazi regime made of it, the Cardinal’s action contributed to making Munich not only the birthplace of Nazism but also the seat of its resistance.  It was in Munich that the White Rose movement formed under the leadership of Hans and Sophie Scholl.  And when Munich was falling to the Allies, the Nazi forces put up only the weakest defence. Catholic Munich paid a high price: schools were closed, the clergy arrested, many churches were destroyed.


It’s unthinkable that any Christian could be anti-Semitic, should despise Jewish people.  It’s inconceivable that the latter day disciples of the Jewish Messiah should entertain such a prejudice.


Christ our God and his Blessed Mother, from whom he took human flesh, were and are Jewish.  She and her Jewish spouse, St Joseph, brought the holy Infant to the Jewish Temple to do for him what the Jewish Law required.  They were faithful members of the people with whom God had entered into the covenant.


The Law required that the first-born male in the family must be redeemed by the sacrifice of a lamb.  Families which couldn’t afford a lamb offered instead a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons, which is what the parents of Jesus offered – thus, we realise that they lived in poverty.  Even more importantly, thus we realise that Christ now stands among his own people, his own countrymen and women.


Of course, Christ didn’t need redeeming in the way we mean.  He committed no sin.  Neither did his mother need purification.  She too was sinless and full of grace.  But this episode in their life, their presentation in the Temple, speaks to the Holy Family’s adherence to the Jewish Law and to Christ’s place among his people.


But that is not all.  Simeon witnesses to Christ’s mission to all humanity, not just his own people.  The holy Babe whom he held in his arms is not only the glory of God’s people, Israel, but also is the light for revealing the God of Israel to the nations.  That is, the Son of God reveals his Father even to people who are not Jewish.


Thus, in his own way, Simeon speaks about a New Israel forming up, a new people whose members come from every nation.  The New Israel doesn’t dispose of the Old Israel; it’s the Church in which our Jewish brothers and sisters are our elder siblings in faith.  St Paul says to us in Romans that the nations entering God’s covenant with Israel through faith will lead Old Israel also into accepting Christ, and thus All-Israel will be saved: Old and New; Old as part of the New.


All of this saving work goes on because Christ brings the nations knowledge of the God of Israel.  The nations once didn’t know God.  They might have known about him, about his existence, unity, and goodness.  But they didn’t know that he enters a marriage-like covenant with his people and that he is love: it took Christ to show the world those things.  Thus, the nations are enlightened by Christ: we know God to be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, through Christ’s earthly life and the new and eternal covenant he forged by his sacrifice on the Cross.


So now, we bear our light to the world.  We hold up the flame of Christian faith to all who are turning their heads this way, that they will see Christ in us and then ask to be reborn.  Our love of neighbour includes our Jewish brothers and sisters, whose forebears Simeon and Anna laid eyes on the Christ of God.  We pray that they all will enter the holy Church of God: together with us, as the New Israel, they too will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.


Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Parish Priest

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