Since the end of the Christmas Season, which concluded with the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord on January 9^th, and moving through these first weeks of Ordinary Time, we have been listening to the Letter to the Hebrews. As we reach the high point of the letter, the author, seeking to encourage and remind their audience that staying close to Christ, submitting to undergo God’s loving discipline and persevering in the faith, is nothing less than an endurance contest, reminds us that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1).

Running on this brisk, northeastern morning with warnings of severe cold s to set in, and feeling the discipline (and the fun) of these daily runs, I’m reminding of the great witnesses we have to encourage us along. Yesterday was the feast of St. Brigid of Ireland. St. Brigid, whose name means “strong, powerful and exalted,” entered religious life when she was just a young girl. She founded, and became the abbess of a great monastery in Kildare, called the Church of the Oak. A famous painting depicts St. Brigid transforming water into beer and healing a blind man—at the same time! She is the patron saint of dairy workers, poets, blacksmiths, healers, cows and other farmyard animals. With St. Patrick she is revered as a protector of Ireland – so much so that starting this coming Monday, the first Monday of February henceforth will be dedicated to St. Brigid, and celebrated as a public holiday. This will also be the first bank holiday in Ireland to be held in honor of a woman.

Today, the fortieth day after Christmas, is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas, or “the festival of lights.” The Gospel recounts an event early in Jesus’s life, when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, offering to God their firstborn son. Bearing witness to this event are the prophetess Anna, who, having been widowed after just seven years of marriage, spent the length of her days, praying and fasting, day and night, in the Temple until the age of eighty-four. And Simeon, a righteous elderly man who was “awaiting the consolation of Israel,” and to whom the Holy Spirit “revealed that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.” Moved by that same Spirit he took the infant Christ in his arms, and “blessed God,” saying, “now Master, you let your servant go in peace.” Each night, unto this very day, the Church concludes her prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours with these words of Simeon in the form of a hymn called the Nunc Dimittis. Simeon also makes a prophetic statement about Christ’s destiny, as well as that of our Blessed Mother, whose destiny is intimately intertwined with that of her Son, as a result of her courageous “Fiat,” her all-in “yes” to God.  

Today is also the World Day for Consecrated Life, which was instituted by Pope St. John Paul the Great in 1997 “to help the entire Church to esteem ever more greatly the witness of those persons who have chosen to follow Christ by means of the practice of the evangelical counsels,” and “to be a suitable occasion for consecrated persons to renew their commitment and rekindle the fervor which should inspire their offering of themselves to the Lord.”

We are indeed “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” as we move through this Ordinary Time after Christmas. May we be inspired by their example to be courageous witnesses to Christ in the world. And may we also respond in our lives with an all-in YES to God.