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Burning candle – a symbol of Jesus.
Today’s holiday is spent in our hearts on something from the Christmas magic. Both holidays, today’s and Christmas, have something in common. At Christmas, the child Jesus lies in a manger and his mother Mary and Saint Joseph bow over him. On today’s Feast of the Sacrifice of the Lord, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph bring the child Jesus to the sanctuary to be sacrificed to God. This sacrifice of a child to God has ancient origins. When the Jews were in Egyptian slavery for many years and their lives there were difficult because the Egyptians used them for hard labor and had a favorable labor force in them, God had mercy on their difficult fate by committing the heaviest calamity on the Egyptians after minor calamities, that he caused all the firstborn sons in Egypt to perish on the 7th night. Because the king of Egypt’s firstborn son also died, then the king finally set the Jews free. The Jews withdrew from Egypt, and since they tried the great love of God, that when all the firstborn perished in Egypt, their firstborn sons remained alive, they remembered this miraculous intervention of God so that, that from then on they brought their firstborn sons to the temple on the fortieth day after birth to be sacrificed to God. And so the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph sacrificed the child Jesus to the Lord God in the temple. And during this religious ceremony, at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the religious old man Simeon also participated, who took the little Jesus into his arms and exclaimed in the Holy Spirit that he could already die, for he lived to see with his own eyes the one who will become the light of the nations.

This prophecy of St. Simeon about Jesus, that he will be the muscle of nations, is commemorated today, on the fortieth day after Christmas, so that candles are blessed in our churches, symbolizing the Lord Jesus. This means that the burning candles represent to us with their fire the four excellent qualities of the Lord Jesus. First, fire is the source of light. It shines in the dark so that all the darkness of the world cannot overcome the light of one candle. The Lord Jesus is also a light for us. He shines into our lives with his word and his example. And the world’s darkness will never prevail over him because he said: „ I am with you until the end of the world.” Second, fire is a source of power. All powerful engines of Earth vehicles, ships, aircraft, and space rockets are moved by fire. And the Lord Jesus is also our strength in the spiritual life. He said: „ Without me, you can do nothing. Only he who abides in me, and I in him bears abundant fruit.” And therefore, the apostle Paul wrote: I can do everything in him who strengthens me. Third, fire is a source of heat. He warms us and warms our dwellings so that we can live joyfully. Without heat, we would catch a cold and die. Also, the Lord Jesus fills us with the warmth of his love to experience true joy and happiness in our lives; Windows says: “Stay in my love… that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Of these three properties of fire, let us recall the fourth, most moving property of the burning candle. Ork serves people so intensively that it keeps getting smaller, burns itself, and sacrifices itself. Also, the Lord Jesus sacrificed his life for us out of love. After all, he said in advance: „Nobody has no greater love than the one who lays down his life for his friends.”(John 15,13) And at the Last Supper, the apostle announced his death on the cross with these words: „ This is my body, which is sacrificed for you”. And „this is the cup of my blood that is shed for you”. (Mass canon) Behold, these beautifully four qualities remind us of burning candles. They remind us that the Lord Jesus is our light, our strength, our love, so much love that he sacrificed his life. And from such reflection, a warm personal relationship with the Lord Jesus can be formed in our hearts: „ You are my light, you are my star, you are my love, you sacrificed your life for me. Strengthen me to love myself more and more and become more like you. This warm attraction to the Lord Jesus is reminded of burning candles. May our heavenly Mother, the Virgin Mary, who had the warmest relationship with the Lord Jesus and all the people in the world, help us with her example and intercession. 

How will catch the elephant lion? You probably assume that such a mountain of meat is simply invincible. In some parts of Africa, however, lions hunt in packs, isolate one of these monstrous animals from his herd, and thus can overpower him with several times the power. We, too, are the weakest and most vulnerable when we separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Throughout its history, God’s people were considered to belong to each other through shared prayer, keeping the Sabbath, or celebrating holidays and festivities in the temple.

However, the faithful to whom this letter was addressed were strongly tempted to go it alone and neglect the Eucharistic service and common prayer, which was supposed to be a regular part of their lives. And so the author challenges readers: “Let’s be afraid of love and good deeds… Let’s not leave our gatherings…, but encourage ourselves” (Hebr 10, 24 – 25). As such, Christianity is not destined to live in isolation. We are all members of the body of Christ, and only through this body does accurate blessing flow. The more we separate from each other, the more vulnerable and prone we are to temptation. Without the testimony of fellow believers, our perspective can be blurred, and we can lose sight of everything that God has already done for us in our lives.

After all, even the silent testimony of families or individuals at Sunday holy masses speak, raise our hearts, and encourage us in the constant search for the Lord. St John Chrysostom said: “You cannot pray at home as much as in the church community… in the unity of mind, in a harmony of souls, in a bond of love, in the prayers of the priest.” Other church community members encourage us, but we can do the same for them. Let’s focus on what happens when we celebrate the Eucharist. Nothing compares to the blessing of true fraternal fellowship. Through the gathering of believers, the Lord abundantly gives blessings – even eternal life (Ž 133, 3).

Adam lived happily with his wife, Eve, in Eden. He enjoyed the fruits of Eden and the animals for his direct sustenance. Man did not work at that time. God only says this to Adam after he has sinned. Cursed be the ground for you. With toil shalt thou feed upon it. Thorns and thistles shall bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herbs of the field. Did God thus predestine man for agriculture? I suppose so. The sin must have been committed sometime just before the beginning of man, the farmer. Suppose we assume that the biblical paradise on earth was probably at the source of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers as far as Lake Van in modern-day Turkey. In that case, we are in the land of earliest agriculture, even according to archaeologists. This area is considered to be the cradle of agriculture. If we look at the archaeological sites from this area and the Book of Genesis, the fall of man into sin can most likely be dated between 10,000 and 9,000 years before Christ. What led man to sin in the first place?

The Book of Genesis says. The serpent was more crafty than all the beasts of the field and told the woman. Did God say you can’t eat from any tree of Eden? The woman replied. We may eat of the fruit of the trees of paradise, but we must not eat of the fruit of the midst of paradise lest we die. But the serpent said. No, you will not die. God knows that the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Him. What’s the point? The plain biblical text tempts us to look for the cause of sin in temptation and disobedience to sin. Just why was man obedient for such a long time? All of a sudden, he rebelled. The cause must have been some extraordinary discovery. What a discovery it was. The serpent in the Garden of Eden speaks plainly. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.

What does the tempter want to accomplish? Disobedience? Hardly. We know that disobedience is a transgression that brings discord and unrest, but only temporarily. Love remains. Satan needed something much more. He needed to convince the man that he was enough on his own. That is why God is God, and he is enough for himself. And the temptation is directed toward this feeling of man. I am enough for myself. I don’t need God. If I believe this, the logical conclusion follows. If I have everything by myself, I can do everything I need to live, so God does not exist. In this reasoning lies the whole mystery of original sin.

The Cromagnon man, as the literature calls him, was named after the locality where he was discovered, and he was a man in the true sense of the word. Homo sapiens lived throughout Europe and, understandably, elsewhere. He lived at the end of the Wurmian Ice Age about 15,000 years ago. He formed numerous ancestral communities. Furthermore, he was nourished by large animals such as the woolly rhinoceros, the giant deer Megaceros, the mammoth, the bear, and the bison. Catching such animals requires good hunting organization. The primary hunting weapon was the spear, the effectiveness of which was multiplied by the thrower.

Meat supplies from slaughtered animals lasted for a long time. A more significant from this period processed almost everything. Fat, skin, bones, horns, teeth, antlers, hooves, tendons. He even found a part for artistic activities. A sense of beauty and a sense of faith were developed in man. A belief that he was not alone. A belief that he is not alone, that there is a great Spirit that will bring successful hunting and success in life. Sin did not exist; man did not think of evil. He did not know it. Human sacrifice did not exist. He had no fear of nature. The man performed religious acts out of gratitude. Some primitive tribes of Australia or South America confirm this. They do not live in animosity and do not know evil. Where civilization has not penetrated, they have not observed hostility from pride, avarice, envy, anger, etc. If I believe in the favor and guidance of the Great Spirit, I will not fear Him and need not woo Him. But I need to ask him, thank him. I only need to propitiate God when I feel and know that I have offended Him and done something wrong. So I feel guilty. Guilt is caused by sin. So I have to see the sin first. Exactly when the knowledge of evil and the commission of sin occurred in the human race is impossible. Rousseau once said. The first man who fenced his land and said. This is mine, and I found someone who believed he founded inequality and exploitation.

It is named after the place of discovery in Germany, Neanderthal, who left behind all the signs that he was aware of his addiction—but not a dependence on nature, as Marxist philosophers teach. According to them, man formed religious ideas due to this dependence or helplessness on the forces of nature. The reality was turned upside down like an apple lying on the ground invented an apple tree.
Religious sentiments arose due to the realization of dependence on a higher, more perfect being. God. If the Marxists were correct that man in his ignorance showed fear of nature, fear of natural phenomena, fear of the future, fear of tomorrow, he would not have survived a century at that time, let alone hundreds of thousands of years. Fear of nature did not exist. The man was part of nature and perceived it as such. The man felt he was not alone. It was this feeling that led man to ask the question. Where are you? He began to search for God and is still searching for Him today. He searched for him in everything that surrounded him. From the feeling of the existence of God, love gradually began to awaken in man. The love of man for man. The love of man for God. The origin of love would be inexplicable. Love cannot be degraded to mere sexual feeling, as in animals. Human love stands incomparably higher.

In books, we can read about the activities of Neanderthals about the size of the brain. We do not read books about the capacity to love. Therefore, the question is legitimate. Could a Neanderthal love? This is a much more important feature of humanity. It is and will be. The Neanderthal certainly loved. For without love, he would not have escaped destruction. Unlike man today, he attributed nothing to chance. Neanderthals also lived in Slovakia, specifically in the Poprad basin. A brain cast of a Gánov Neanderthal has been preserved. Neanderthals lived there about 200 thousand years ago. Younger Neanderthals lived in Slovakia 70 thousand to 15 thousand years before Christ.

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Man is constantly aware of the inability to create paradise on Earth. With his immense desire, he recognized that he needed a kind of “third” to guarantee this fact. He needs a savior. It’s about which “savior” is looking for and what it expects from it.

 As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Christians believe Christ is their savior. He, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens, can reconcile humanity with God and establish order in him. He can “save forever those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them.”

As miracles remind us, Christ’s salvation does not stop in the flesh. He wants to hit the human heart, that is, the whole person. He wants to reshape him and make him capable of love. After all, many are afraid of such a touch of God. However, if they search sincerely, they will reveal “how much better is the contract to which (Christ) is the mediator, because it is based on better promises.”

Order and laws in the world, harmony everywhere. All this cannot be a game of chance. So we can infer the existence of God by our intellect. Scripture gives the creation in a culture of about 3OOO years ago. Creation happened in order, over ages – the world has evolved – and God’s creation is constantly maintained by his handiwork, called providence. The order of creation: primordial matter is created, the heavenly bodies are formed. God chose the Earth and made it habitable for life. Life appeared on Earth: first plants, then animals, then man. God created not only a visible world, but also an invisible world, the world of angels. They have reason and free will, they are spiritual beings, they have nobody. There are several groups, 9 are mentioned in the Scriptures. Some of them serve humans – they are the guardian angels – the others serve God. In the beginning all the angels were good, some of them rebelled with Lucifer at the head, these became the devils, the bad angels, evil spirits. God cast them into hell. They are no more powerful than God, even if today it seems that their power is great, the ultimate victory belongs to God.

Seeing the created world, we conclude that there must be someone, a Master, who created this world, made it, arranged it. if the elements according to the Mendeleev table were to be mixed at random, i.e. what-with, how-much-of-how-much, so that the basic material of protein, amino acid, would be created, then the probability that the suitable compound would be created is as small as this ratio: 1:1O OOOOOOOO…- I can write 16O zeros in a row, i.e. if since the creation of the material world – which is about 15 billion years, – one combination would be created every second, even today all possibilities are not exhausted, and that is only the amino acid molecule…! To leave strain evolution to chance is as nonsense as saying that, for example. a tornado-like whirlwind blows the rubbish around for 2 hours, and when the wind stops, there shines a modern supersonic aircraft, with all the screws, plates, handles and switches in place, you just have to sit in it and start it up…, for anyone who believes this, the explanation without a creator God is “logical”. The master is praised by his work. God is spoken of by the created world. God exists from eternity, there is no beginning or end to his existence. Being a soul, he is invisible to us. He is omnipresent: no one can hide from him, nothing is unknown to him. His faculties are infinite: he knows everything, can do everything, knows what was, knows what will be. Human language has difficulty in expressing the perfection of God. It is easier to say what is not God, what is not God. That is why it was forbidden to pronounce God’s name, lest it be imperfectly named, and why it was forbidden to make a picture or statue of him. Even primitive peoples consider God to be the Great Spirit, who is the ancestor of all living things. The Scriptures call God YAHUVEH, we call God our Father, we even say that He is Love. He is infinitely holy, just, good, faithful, merciful and forgiving and loves all people. We believe in one God. Before our time – before Christ – only the Jews were of one God. First they built a Holy Tent, later a Temple in his honor. Following Jesus’ teaching, the first and most important tenet of Christian doctrine became that there is only one God. This concept spread throughout the world, with most believers in God believing in one God. Implicit in the Old Testament (God speaks of himself in the plural, the seraphic say three times: holy thou art, holy thou art…), Jesus’ teaching is explicit that the one God is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We confess that the Father is the Creator, the Son is the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit is the sanctified. The three divine persons are called in one word the Trinity. It is San inconceivable creed, humbly accepted even if our minds cannot grasp it. Let us think of the case of St Augustine, when God sent him a message in the form of a little child: it is useless to wonder, you cannot understand the mystery of the Trinity….We confess our faith in the Trinity when we make the sign of the cross – that is, when we make the sign of the cross – in the name of the Trinity. What we need to know about the three divine Persons is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed – I believe in one… RESOLUTION. I am trying to infuse my life: my thoughts, my words, my actions, with the spirit of wisdom… It is true that the Holy Spirit will perfect this gift in me, but until then, I want to do everything in this spirit, I am waiting for the Holy Spirit to perfect me in this!

Molecular biology has proven that Australopithecus diverged from the human evolutionary lineage to a dead end and became extinct. Unfortunately, no direct descendants have been found, but one step more perfect ancestors have been found, which based on their working ability, have been called Homo habilis—a man of skill. Many stone tools have been found in Kenya. The discoverer of this ancestor of today’s man was the famous paleontologist Louis S.B. Laeky. This ancestor lived more than 2 million years ago. However, it must be remembered that this ancestor did not live in history apart from other creatures like him, like some perfect predator from whom everyone learned. Homo habilis is not a direct descendant of Australopithecus. He is more advanced but not so much intellectually as he is industrially. But this development is significant. Working skill does not mean that he is aware of the supernatural in addition to himself. From the Christian point of view, a man of skill is not yet a real man. A better scientific view of this genus would be Hominoid habilis, the skillful ancestor of man. For man’s actual ancestors, we go to another continent, Asia. Not that man did not continue to evolve in Africa, but the upright man Homo erectus has the primacy in Asia. He deserves the name, man. He lived throughout Asia and Africa about a million years ago. The Dutch physician Eugène Dubois discovered in Java a skull and later a man’s femur strikingly similar to a human’s. From its shape as a physician, he concluded that the creature to which it belonged must have walked upright. The name Pithecanthropus erectus was coined. Homo erectus wasn’t just significant because he walked on two legs. He had a much larger brain and lived in packs. More significant is his mental development, which outpaced all known animals at the time, He could defend himself, hunt, process prey in a way that no animals do. The birth of an intelligent being like Homo erectus cannot be only the work of nature but, at the same time, the work of something higher, superior to both nature and man himself. Homo erectus used sign language supplemented by monosyllabic sounds, which gave the basis for future words. There arose an intense need for belonging that could overcome distress and danger. Here, too, was born a sense of the Creator. It emerged slowly and gradually, marked by setbacks, hardships, pain, and sorrow. All these qualities were inherent in Homo erectus. Homo erectus survived in conditions in which even today’s man, with his technical conveniences, would have had to do.