That simple ceremony, by which Our Lord’s holy Mother, in obedience to the Jewish Law, offered him to God, symbolised the beginning of his own life of self-offering in unfaltering and willing obedience to his Father’s will.

It revealed itself at every turn.  As a boy of 12, when he stayed behind in the Temple in Jerusalem, he saw plainly that his duty to God came before his duty to his Mother and his guardian, “Why were you searching for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (NRSV, Luke 2:49).

So later he gave up the security and comparative comfort of his home in Nazareth for a life which he described by saying, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (NRSV, Matthew 8:20).

And he went on giving himself to God right to the end: and the Presentation in the Temple in his infancy reached its completion and crown upon the Cross of Calvary when he gave himself utterly and unreservedly as the perfect offering for the sins of humankind, for your sins and mine.