Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Presentation (A), Vigil
February 1, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and part of every episode of Conversations with Consequences involves focusing on the consequential conversation Jesus wishes us to have with him on Sunday.
- This Sunday we celebrate the great feast of the Presentation of the Baby Jesus in the Temple, a feast fixed 40 days after Christmas, so it can fall on any day of the week. It’s rare, then, that it falls on a Sunday, which is a shame, because, ordinarily, no one but daily Mass-goers has a chance to celebrate this feast and all that it means in Jesus’ life and is supposed to mean in ours.
- The point of this feast is summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that the Church prays at the beginning of Mass just before the procession with candles. They describe the Presentation fundamentally as an encounter. “Today is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph,” we said. “Outwardly he was fulfilling the Law, but in reality he was coming to meet his believing people.” After describing how Simeon and Anna met him in the Temple, we continue. “So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find him and recognize him in the breaking of the Bread until he comes again, revealed in glory.” They prayers and others convey that Jesus is constantly being presented to us and we are supposed to be constantly presenting ourselves to him. The Christian life is meant to be a continuous mutual presentation, a lifetime encounter of love and life.
- The celebration contains many practical applications to help us keep that continuous encounter throughout our life. I’d like to ponder what it says about encountering the Lord when we’re young, when we’ve become young parents, when we’ve gotten older.
- Let’s begin with the rich lessons this feast has for seniors and for those who are beginning to get up in years. How was it that Simeon and Anna, the two seniors in Sunday’s Gospel, recognized Jesus when he was brought to the temple? Among the tens of thousands of people there that day, why were they the only two to recognize that the child wrapped in swaddling clothes in Mary’s arms was the long awaited Messiah? The reason, I believe, is because they were present in the temple differently from everyone else. They were waiting for the Lord in the temple. They were longing for him. They were expecting him with hearts and “minds made pure” so that with that purity they could see the Lord when at last he came. They were so in love with the Lord that they burst forth speaking of him toward others. Simeon took Jesus in his arms, praised God, and then presented him not just to Israel as her glory but to all the nations as their light. Anna, as soon as she saw Jesus, began to praise God and began to speak of him to all who were looking for the redemption he had come to bring into the world. They show seniors that the best way to use our later years is to grow closer to the Lord, by encountering him in prayer, in sacrificial love, in time spent worshipping the Lord in his holy temple. It’s a time for prayer. A time to go to daily Mass. A time to get involved in charity. Simeon’s words, “Now, O Lord, let your servant depart in peace, … for my eyes have seen your salvation!,” are words each of us should want to say at the end of our life when the Lord Jesus returns for us. The vespers of our life are also a time to speak of God to others, to pass on real wisdom, to present the Lord to those who don’t see his presence, to show how he is the light shining in the midst of so much darkness, to manifest that loving and serving him is our greatest glory.
- Next we turn to what this feast teaches young adults and couples, especially those with young children. Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to present their child to God. In the law of Moses, every first born child had to be given over to God, placed in the Lord’s service, and sacrificed to him. This was to show that every gift comes from God and every gift needs to be willing to be given back to God for his glory. Mary and Joseph, fulfilling perfectly the law of Moses, came to offer Jesus back to God. God the Father still wants every child to be offered back to Him in Christ. This starts when a young couple brings their newly born child to be baptized. The child is, in a certain sense, sacrificed: the child dies in Christ in the Sacrament of Baptism and Christ rises within him to new life. In baptism a child is not merely presented in the temple, but becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, like a tabernacle holding the presence of God within. Parents are called to help the child become aware of this beautiful reality and structure their life in accordance with this blessing. St. Francis said that parents need to speak to their children about God and to God about their children.
- Finally we turn to what young people — and every child of God — can learn from this feast. Each of us here has been presented in the temple of God by our parents and godparents, and we were consecrated. We’re called to renew that consecration always, especially at Mass. The Presentation is often called Candlemas, or the “Mass of Candles,” because it begins with the procession of lit candles. This is meant first to renew something very important from our baptism, when our godfathers lit our baptismal candle from the Paschal Candle and said, “Receive the Light of Christ!,” and were instructed to keep that light burning brightly. Jesus, as Simeon says in the Gospel, is a “light of revelation to the Gentiles.” He is the Light of the World. But, in the Sermon on the Mount, he also calls us to be the Light of the World. The way those two truths go together is that we are supposed to burning with his light. We will process with these lit candles, a sign that he calls us to walk as children of the light, and to walk together as God’s family.
- Tomorrow, whether we’re young or old, we give thanks to God for this feast as we come to a culmination so much greater than what Simeon and Anna received in the temple. Simeon was able to hold Jesus in his arms as he praised God and prophesied that the Child was destined to be the ruin and the resurrection of many in Israel and a sign to be contradicted. Tomorrow we have a chance to do far more than hold. We have a chance to receive him within and become one with Him in a holy Communion of love as Jesus seeks to make us, by our receiving his risen body and blood, sharers in his risen life. The Mass is the place in which Jesus seeks to give us a foretaste of the eternal Temple where we, with Simeon, Anna and all the saints, seek to behold and encounter him forever. Jesus is the glory of Israel. Jesus is the light of revelation to all nations. How lucky we are that the Holy Spirit is moving each of us, as he moved Simeon and Anna, to go to the temple, to recognize him, to rejoice in him, to receive him, and to reveal his light and his love to the world!
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