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Good morning.

While I never prevailed upon my parents for lifts

to Saturday morning school sports,

it was more out of an aversion to games

than any thought of not putting them to the trouble.

I’m under no illusion how many other demands I did make of them though.

Not because they were ever cast up to me,

but because now with three nieces and three nephews in our family

my wife and I have observed how naturally and movingly

parental selflessness kicks in.

Ìý

In these minutely budgeted, every-penny-counts domestic times,

admittedly it’s only small- deprivations I see.

Certainly nothing on the scale of the clergyman I once met.

His boyhood ended the day he noticed his widowed mother was eating bread

cut into the shape of the chops she was serving to the children

but couldn’t afford to eat herself.

Which is why for me, today’s Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

strikes a poignant note,

especially, if what Joseph and Mary brought for sacrifice was

the modest two pigeon ‘offering of the poor’.

Ìý

So much of what was given up or done without for us growing up

was let go of instinctively and unselfconsciously,

born out of that forgetful love which is such an everyday illustration

of the word ‘grace’.

If that love takes on a spiritual expression, spiritual fruit often flows.

I say that out of personal gratitude to God

for those who not only rooted me in the community of faith at Baptism

but have continued their prayerful work

of feeding, nurturing and encouraging me to this day.

Ìý

Our Father, little could Mary or Joseph have foreseen

how bountifully their meagre gift would be repaid.

We praise you for all those whose endless self-giving

imbued us with such a vital sense of value

and pointed us to Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen