Most of you know that before my back surgery I was a commercial electrician working mostly on large construction (Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, etc.). During that time I got to be privy to what happens to a lot of the leftover scrap, especially when you are living in an impoverished area and working with men who need ‘pocket change.’ Everything from leftover cabling to broken computer parts was fair game, including any plumbing pipe or copper that might be cut off no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Men would take them home, strip them down to the parts that were worth money and then sell them to a recycling facility to get a little extra cash.
Some of the guys were impatient. Instead of going out and slowly going through the material, cleaning it of excess covering and plastics, they’d just put it in a big pile and set it on fire. What you’d end up with was a very dirty, very oxidated piece of metal. It didn’t sell for as much. The recycling place took into account the filth, the part they’d have to work on cleaning up, and that went into how much they would give you for it. It took a lot of extra effort to strip wire, or as a friend of mine began to do, to refine it. That is, melt it down, get rid of the contaminants, and then be able to sell pure copper, gold, silver, and so forth. One summer, my wife and I had several hundred pounds of leftover wire. We hauled it back home in the trunk of the car. She spent every afternoon after work out in the sun, stripping down all the plastic until all we had left was copper. It took time. It took energy. It took effort. In the end, though, we got several hundred dollars out of it (and she had a killer tan.) We are a lot like that in our spiritual lives.
In today’s first reading, it says that God is the refiner. He will apply to fire to us, melt us down, scoop out the impurities, and leave us in a state of grace. We have free will though. Unlike the wire or computer parts people might meltdown to sell, God expects us to do part of the work. Not because He needs us, but because He works in us, and through us. That’s how love works, isn’t it? It doesn’t force. It offers and allows. Why do I bring up this idea of us working with God for our salvation? As we meditate on the readings for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, it reminds us that there are things we should be doing as people in a covenant relationship with God. Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple. Not because Jesus needed to be made part of God’s family, He was the Son of God. They brought Him to the temple because that’s what families do, that was what being in love with God looked like.
Then comes the Prophetess Anna. This lady had been in the temple worshipping God for decades. She showed people what true love looks like. A lot like our sisters and nuns today, she gave her entire life to God. Then comes that word that we (or maybe just I) don’t really enjoy hearing: fasting. It says in the Gospel that she “worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.” Pope Benedict the XVI once said: “Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.” You see, Jesus did all the work on the cross to make it possible for us to get to Heaven. Our works aren’t doing that, but like Mary and Joseph, works show people in a relationship. They have merit when they are offered in union with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, with the Eucharist.
It is in communion that we see this most fully, when we come to Mass we are offering ourselves to Jesus. It’s all we truly have to offer. He gave everything to us. So we offer it all back to Him. Then we offer to God the Father the most precious gift He ever gave us, Jesus Christ Himself, in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. That’s why we have a Eucharistic fast, though it’s only an hour it’s often complained about. The thing is, if the Eucharist is what we say it is, if it is who we say it is, then what more do we need as a meal? In closing, I want to share a story I have shared many times before, but it truly expresses the idea of a refiner in a way that I think more than apropos for today:
There was a group of women in a Bible study on the book of Malachi. As they were studying chapter three they came across verse three which says, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” This verse puzzled the women and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God.
One of the women offered to find out about the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible study. That week the woman called up a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn’t mention anything about the reason for her interest in silver beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that, in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest so as to burn away all the impurities.
Silver smith putting heat to a silver bowlThe woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot – then she thought again about the verse, that He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver. She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. For if the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, “How do you know when the silver is fully refined?” He smiled at her and answered, “Oh, that’s the easy part — when I see my image reflected in it.”
I think that the story reminds us today to look in the mirror and ask: Can others see God in me? Prayer, fasting, the Sacraments… these are sure-fire ways to begin removing the dross and allow God to refine us, not to make us carbon copies of one another, but to bring you to the fullness of life He created you for.
A reflection on the readings for Sunday, February 2nd, 2020: The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.