There are many kinds of sleep. The one which lets us wake up in the morning refreshed and alive is a blessing. There is another which is pathological—a sleeping sickness which makes a person go around like a zombie and never wake up fresh and alert.

That is on the physical plane. On the spiritual plane there is a similar kind of sleeping sickness, a sleep that dulls our minds and keeps us from being aware of God or anything spiritual.

How do we contract this spiritual sleeping sickness?—One thing is sure, it does not descend on us from the environment or an outside agent. We are the ones who anaesthetize ourselves into this sleep.

How?—By committing any mortal sin. Sin pricks us like a wasp and leaves a venom that leads to more sin until it entrenches itself as a habit. We then become like the old dog that cannot be taught a new trick. We are fixed in our ways and cannot imagine any other way of living or behaving. We have become spiritual zombies, blind and deaf to God and to our neighbours, except to exploit them for our own advantage.

This kind of sleep is truly a curse, and one that we bring upon ourselves. May we never let ourselves be caught in its clutches! Physical sleep is a blessing, but only because it helps us to be physically alert afterwards. Spiritual sleep is no blessing at all. What does it mean to be spiritually awake?—It means to be in the state of grace, but many people are confused as to what that means. Some think that if they have a hot argument with someone and they feel upset they are out of the state of grace and are unfit to receive communion. An excited argument may well leave you upset, but it is not a breach of charity and does not amount to a mortal sin. Only a mortal sin can take us out of the state of grace.
Paul tells us what the state of grace is like. It is to be joined with Jesus Christ, who fills us with the gifts of the Spirit, to keep us steady and without blame until the day of his coming. He nourishes this grace within us by providing us with teachers and preachers who enlighten and encourage us, and above all he gives us his own body and blood as nourishment for the health of our body and soul.

God has worked wonders with us. As Isaiah says, he tore open the heavens and came down, to live with us on earth. He rescued us from sin and brought us to life.

Banks have been shut down by Central Bank, university study centres closed by NUC, various pharmaceutical and food processing plants locked up by NAFDAC. In each case a government supervisory agency sent a visitation panel to investigate and make a judgment.

Nigeria is in distress and some people talk openly of a "failed state", or dismantling and disbanding the Federation. The symptoms are too many to enumerate. In the end God himself will come and make a judgement. His own visitation will expose the root of all our troubles, troubles found not only in Nigeria, but throughout the world. The root of these troubles is sin, mortal sin, which replaces love of God and neighbour with contempt for God and exploitation of neighbour.

The writing is on the wall. We have been warned. Any institution or person expecting a visitation will try to put everything right before the visitation panel arrives.

But in trying to put their house in order, many people find the task too big and get discouraged. For me to move a mountain or fill a valley!—I would need ten life-times of shovelling to get the job done. To get ready for a visitation, especially a divine one?—I cannot do it alone. I need assistance—someone to come in and advise me, and not only advise me, but actually to help me carry out the major rehabilitation of my life that is required.

That is why, before the coming of Christ as judge, he first comes as a Saviour. Yes, Jesus is our teacher and best adviser. But he is more than that. He is the chief contractor in the building of our spiritual life. By his word of command, we can bulldoze the mountains in our lives and fill in the valleys—That is to overcome intractable habits of sin, to repair shattered relationships, to make our lives productive and useful to others.

Although Christ is of such stature that we are not worthy to stoop and loosen his sandals for him, he has the mind of God, as Peter says, "being patient with all, wanting nobody to be lost, and everybody to be brought to change his ways." And, as Isaiah says, "he is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms..."

At his second coming Christ will reveal his work of grace in our lives and give us our eternal reward. At the same time, he will reveal the fraud and bankruptcy of those who would not accept his teachings or his divine help, and declare them disqualified for the final cup.

"I am the greatest" was the boast of the boxer Muhammad Ali. Maybe none of us would say that about ourselves, but few people run away from recognition and praise, and many spend their lives chasing after it. For John the Baptist the chase was in the opposite direction: "He must become greater, I must become less" (Jn 3:30).

There stands among you a greater one. In comparison to his dignity, all our honours, all our accomplishments, all that people praise us for, add up to nothing. He is not only the greatest man that ever lived; he is also the eternal Son of God come on earth.

Why then did he come among us? Was it to gather to himself all honour, glory and praise, and leave us in total dishonour, disgrace and blame? He himself, like John the Baptist, was not interested in human honour and praise. For one thing, knowing what is in people, he did not trust himself to them when they cheered him at the Jerusalem Passover (Jn 2:23-25), and again when they wanted to grab him and make him their king, he fled to a hills alone (Jn 6:15).

Nor was his coming a question of "up, up Jesus, down with the rest of us." John the Baptist later explains that he is like the best man to Jesus the bridegroom (Jn 3:29); the bride is the Church, all of us, whom Jesus calls to share not an earthly dignity but a divine one.

John the Baptist turned down the titles he was offered to claim. He first rightly rejected claim to be the Christ. Secondly, he denied that he was Elijah, who was taken up in a fiery chariot and expected to return, even though Gabriel told Zechariah that the boy John the Baptist would go forth with the spirit and power of Elijah (Lk 1:17), and Jesus testified that Elijah, meaning John the Baptist, has already come and they treated him as they liked, by killing him (Mk 9:13). Thirdly, John denied that he was "the Prophet", that is, the one promised by Moses (Dt 18:18), which properly refers to Christ, although Jesus also stated that John was "a prophet and more than a prophet" (Mt 11:9; Lk 7:26).

John would only claim the title of "a voice crying in the wilderness," which Isaiah had prophesied. John felt both highly honoured and highly overawed to be this voice, the voice of the best-man, preparing the way and ushering in the bridegroom, his baptism with the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God, the Church, the New Covenant. He was overawed at the greatness of this world-shaking drama; he was honoured to be part of it.

"No one can see me and live," God told Moses (Ex 33:20). Who can touch a high-tension electric cable and not be electrocuted? To tap such a line we use a step-down transformer.

Mary conceived in her womb the Son of God. God came to her so calmly–without thunder and lightning, so gently–not without her permission and consent, so smoothly–without removing her virginity, that heretics over the centuries have proposed that God did not come to her with the full power of his divinity, but came in a stepped-down manner, in a Jesus who was wondrously full of grace more than anyone else could be, but not as the Jesus of our Faith: God himself undiluted.

The angel calmly greeted Mary: favoured, imbued and radiant with grace, and calmed her fear by announcing that it was with God that she found favour, before God she stood radiant.
The angel gently announced God's proposal that she should become the mother of Jesus, the mother of the everlasting Messiah-king, the mother of God. And the angel gently explained how she would remain a virgin, while the Holy Spirit formed, as it were by cloning, the child in her womb.
The angel finally smoothed the way for Mary's understanding and consent by telling her what God had done for her cousin Elizabeth: "Let it be to me according to your word." "Blessed is she who believed," who first conceived Christ in her heart by faith and love before conceiving him in her womb.
Each of us has been visited by an angel, in the form of our parents, our teachers, our catechists, our priests or others, who have introduced us to the Christ knocking on our door, to be admitted into our hearts as Mary welcomed him into her own.
Mary continued to treasure Jesus in her heart right up to his death, resurrection and ascension and on to her own death and assumption. After conceiving Jesus in our hearts by faith and baptism, have we likewise treasured his presence, kept our baptismal innocence, or quickly recuperated it after dropping it, with the prospect of finishing our life in his grace and rising to new life with him?

For a new year we pray the triple blessing: (1) May the Lord bless you, (2) may he shine his face on you, (3) may he bring you peace.

That blessing, which God taught Moses, the shepherds received from heaven, as first, they heard the angels announce God's blessing, secondly, they saw his glory shine on them, thirdly, they were offered the peace they would find in the new-born Christ.

That blessing was reenacted when the shepherds visited the child Jesus: (1) As they spoke about what they had seen and heard, the heavenly blessing re-echoed on themselves and on Mary. (2) Instead of God's glory shining in the sky, they saw the true divine light of the world in the child before them. (3) Their hearts were filled with a peace and joy which they carried with them when they went away.

This is the triple blessing that originates from God the Father, who first pronounced this blessing by speaking his eternal Word. Secondly he manifested his glory in the Son he sent for us to see, hear and touch. Thirdly, he gave us peace by adopting us as his sons and implanting his Spirit in us.

As God poured his blessing on us in this triple way, so it is for us to join in praising and blessing him in return in union with Jesus and Mary.

That is made possible by our baptism, which is the Christian replacement of Jewish circumcision. In baptism the blood of Christ cleanses us (Hb 9:14), the blood he first shed on his eighth day, in the rite of circumcision, which was also a naming ceremony. As the child was called Jesus, the Saviour, because he really was so, likewise in baptism we are called the children of God because that is what we have really become.

And so the Spirit of God's Son, which he sends into our hearts, makes us cry out "Abba, Father," because that is what God really is to us. The Spirit enables us to praise the Father because He reveals to us the mystery of God's Son. He enables us to treasure ponder this mystery the way Mary treasured and pondered it in her heart.

He also enables us to discover Mary as the self-effacing facilitator of God's action, the one who permitted God to become man and nursed him into this physical world of people, thereby nursing all of us into the spiritual world of God.

The shepherds heard the angels praising God for the birth of Christ, but it was only after they saw the child with Mary that they could make the Gloria their own song of praise. As adopted children of our heavenly Father, redeemed by Christ, we are all members of the extended Holy Family and children of Mary, the Mother of God and our mother and matriarch.

A family album is worth showing people. You see baby pictures, first communion, birthdays, confirmation, graduation, weddings. From the album of the Holy Family, the Church today has pulled out, for us to see, a snapshot of the Presentation.

Jesus had already been named. This was a Jewish ceremony of dedication. Forty days after birth, the child, received from God, was given back to him. Then, upon the offering of a substitute—in this case a pair of doves or pigeons—the child was entrusted to the parents for upbringing.

In the case of Jesus, Mary and Joseph were certainly thankful for the gift of this child from God. The child Jesus was God's gift as any other child is, but a much fuller way. He was God's gift of himself, in the person of his eternal Word, now uniting to himself a human nature in the form of an infant. This child, embodying both our vulnerable humanity and the eternal divine nature, is what Mary and Joseph presented to God in the Temple.

God received this child as a pleasing offering which would suffice to redeem the human race even if Jesus never died on the cross. God entrusted him back to Mary and Joseph and through Simeon and Anna gave them the clear understanding that the child would be dedicated to his heavenly Father's business, and they would have to let go of him as he went about this work of salvation, as a light to the nations and the glory of Israel.

God also made it clear through Simeon that many years later the child would be presented as an offering again, that time to be accepted, as Jesus was crucified and his Mother experienced the pain as a sword going through her soul.

The Presentation was a momentous event in the Holy Family. They had already gone through hard times: first as Joseph, Mary's fiancé was getting ready to repudiate her when he discovered her pregnancy which he could not account for. Then they had to attend to the birth of Jesus in a roadside shed. And more hard times lay in store for them: the flight into Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter, the strain of losing the child on a visit to Jerusalem, and the strain of opposition and plots to kill him during his public life, and finally his death on the cross.

At that time Joseph, who had looked after the family for many years and trained Jesus in carpentry, had been gathered with his fathers. And Jesus, as a dutiful son, put his Mother in the care of the Apostle John.

So the Presentation encapsulates the collective lives of all three members of the Holy Family: their love and care for one another in good times and bad, and their awareness that they are not a nuclear family closed in on itself, but have a mission to bring all of mankind into their family, the family of God, the Church.

The Presentation is a scene that evokes a flashback to Mary and Joseph's childhood, their betrothal and the birth of Jesus. It evokes a fast-forward to the public life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and provides us with a binocular look at his coming at the end of time to bring to a conclusion his work as the Alpha and Omega of history.

While Peter followed Jesus to the high priest's courtyard, Jesus listened to his accusers' talk, and finally answered, "Yes, I am the Christ the Son of the Blessed One, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven." That was enough for the priests' court to condemn him. In the meantime, to the servant girl, Peter denied that he knew Jesus.

The next day Pilate held court and found no case against Jesus. He let the crowd issue the verdict: Crucify him. And so he ordered it to be carried out.

The soldiers then crowned him with thorns and mocked him.

Then they led him out, conscripted Simon to help carry the cross, and crucified him. The crowd and the two crucified with him taunted him. But Jesus, calling on his Father, gave up his spirit, tearing open the earthly and heavenly holy of holies, and commanding the faith of the centurion.

The same good woman who anointed him in the beginning and many others were on hand again at the end, to assist Joseph of Aramathea put the body in the grave.

The disciples panicked and woke Jesus. He got up and calmed the storm and the sea all right, and then rebuked their lack of faith. Lack of faith:

There are those who have no faith. When a crisis comes, they run out of theChurch to any babalawo or prophet who promises to help them. And there are those who have little faith. When a crisis comes, they make a lot of noise, and everyone hears them shaking and tugging Jesus into action.

And there are those who have a simple faith without complex. When a crisis comes, they don't get excited. They know Jesus is there. They put their whole problem before him with the serenity of Mary when she said, "They have no wine" (Jn 2:3), or of the sisters of Lazarus who said, "Lord, the man you love is sick" (Jn 11:3).

Why is faith missing or weak in some people? There is a correlation between faith and love. The disciples faith was weak because their love was not perfectly focused on Jesus. Still on their minds was the question who was the greatest among them, and what they would get when Jesus came into his kingship.

Many people in the midst of a major crisis find themselves unable to muster any faith in God or courage to move forward. If they examine their lives they may find that there is a moral problem in their lives, a selfishness shown in cheating or disregard for others or unchastity. The crisis they fell into may be a wake-up call to repent of that evil in their lives. Then they will see clearly to recognize the presence of Jesus inside themselves.