Presentation of the Lord, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 1, 2025

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Presentation, Vigil
February 1, 2025

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Msgr. Roger Landry, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as together we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, when we will celebrate a great feast, one that is fixed 40 days after Christmas, so it can fall on any day of the week. It’s rare, then, that the Presentation of the Lord falls on a Sunday, which is a pity, because, ordinarily, only daily Mass-goers have a chance to celebrate this feast and all that it means in Jesus’ life and is supposed to mean in ours. Those who pray the Rosary meditate upon it at least twice a week in the fourth Joyful Mystery, but it’s great for the whole Church to celebrate this feast together and encourage each other to obtain in its fullness what this holy mystery contains.
• The point of this feast is summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that are said just before the beautiful procession that begins the Mass. They frame the Presentation fundamentally as an encounter. “Today,” the priest says, “is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph. 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, he continues. “So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find himand recognize him in the breaking of the Bread until he comes again, revealed in glory.” This awareness of the Presentation as an encounter with Christ continues throughout the Mass. In the Eucharistic Preface, we pray that “we, too, [will] go forth rejoicing to encounter your salvation.” At the end of Mass, we ask for the grace that “we, going forth to meet the Lord, [may] obtain the gift of eternal life.” All of these prayers 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 candles we bless at the beginning of the Mass are supposed to symbolize our burning love for Jesus. We ask God the Father to bless them precisely “so that, treading the path of virtue, we may reach that light that never fails.” Our encounter with the Lord on the feast of the Presentation and then in the mutual encounter of a virtuous Christian life is meant to lead to an eternal encounter in the heavenly Temple. So that’s what celebrating the Feast of the Presentation well intends to bring about in us. Concretely, however, this celebration also contains many practical applications to help us keep that ongoing meeting with Christ throughout our life, as children, as young parents, and as those advanced in years. Let’s ponder those applications.
• We begin with seniors. How was it that Simeon and Anna, the two seniors in this Sunday’s Gospel, recognized Jesus when he was brought to the temple? Among all the scores of babies brought to be presented in the Temple that day according to the law of Moses, how were they able to discern that the child wrapped in swaddling clothes in Mary’s arms was the long-awaited Messiah? It’s because they were present in the temple differently from everyone else. They were waitingfor the Lord in the temple. They were longing for him. They were expecting him in holiness and in prayer, having allowed the Lord to open their eyes to realities that can only be seen with faith-vision goggles. St. Luke describes them: Simeon was “righteous and devout,” guided by the Holy Spirit, and anxiously awaiting Israel’s consolation in the coming of the Messiah; Anna was a prophetess, who, once she became a widow at 27, essentially married herself to God, never leaving the temple, worshipping God there by prayer and fasting night and day — something she had been doing by that point for 57 years. Both lived looking toward God, waiting for his coming. They both 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 were both advanced in years but full of life because they were animated by the Holy Spirit and responsive to his action.
• Seniors or Christians of any age who likewise want to be full of life have much to learn from them. Some can look at old age as a sad time, especially if one is a widow or widower. Others can regard it as a time just to have fun, to play as much golf as possible, to spend time on games, television and inconsequential hobbies. The best use of our later years is shown by Simeon and Anna. They used them to grow closer to the Lord, by encountering him in prayer, in time spent worshipping the Lord in his holy temple. They used them to reflect on their death, as Simeon did, and to live a life in loving expectation of the Lord’s coming. Simeon’s words, “Now, O Lord, let your servant depart in peace, … for my eyes have seen your salvation!,” each of us should want to say at the end of our life when the Lord Jesus comes 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 darkness, to manifest that loving and serving him is our greatest glory. I would encourage those who are retired who wish to be “full of life” in this world and the next to do all they can to imitate Simeon’s and Anna’s example, seeking to intensify their encounter with the Lord, responding to the Holy Spirit’s promptings drawing people to the temple perhaps by starting to come each day for daily Mass or for regular adoration.
• 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 him to God. In the law of Moses, every first-born child had to be given over to God and placed in the Lord’s service. This was to show that every gift comes from God and needs to be offered back to him, if he wills it, for his glory. Every first-born animal was actually sacrificed in the temple; first-born children obviously would never be killed, but a lamb, or for poor families (like the Holy Family) a pair of pigeons or turtledoves, would be offered vicariously. Mary and Joseph, fulfilling perfectly the law of Moses, came to offer the Son of God in the flesh back to God the Father, thereby showing that fulfilling the law of the Lord and consecrating our loved ones to him is a path of life! For Christian couples, this starts when they bring 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 to new life; the old Adam, with original sin, dies, and the New Adam, Christ, who is full of grace, rises. In baptism a child is not merely presentedin the temple, but marvelously becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, spotless and immaculate on the inside, like a tabernacle holding the presence of God within. Parents are called to help the child become aware of this beautiful reality and structure his or her life in accordance with this blessing, helping their son or daughter view his or her life within God’s light, discovering the vocation God has given, and saying yes to it. At the end of the Gospel passage, we read that Mary and Joseph, when they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth, where Jesus grew in wisdom and strength in the favor of the Lord. Couples are called to take their children with them from the temple back home to their domestic church and there help their offspring to grow in wisdom, strength and the favor of the Lord, assisting them to live according to their consecration. That’s what Mary and Joseph are interceding for all parents to do for their children.
• Finally, we turn to what all of us can learn from this feast today. Each of us has been presented in the temple of God by our parents and godparents, and we were consecrated. We’re called to renew that consecration regularly. We’re called to do it first and foremost in our encounters with God in prayer and the Sacraments. When we enter the Church, as we dip our fingers into the holy water font, we renew our baptism and the consecration of our lives to God. When we pray the Mass, we encounter the Lord anew, unite ourselves to him, and present ourselves together with him, as body and head, Bride and Bridegroom, to the Father in joint consecration.
• This Sunday, we give thanks to God for the feast of the Presentation as we come to a culmination so much greater than what Simeon and Anna received that day 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. Sunday we will have a chance to do far more than hold Jesus in our arms. We have a chance to receive him within and become one with Him in an encounter of loving Communion as Jesus seeks to unite us to him as a sign of contradiction to the ways of the world. He is the glory of Israel and the light of revelation to all peoples, and he seeks to make us, in communion with him, that light and glory, symbolized by the candles we will bless and carry at the beginning of the Mass. The Mass is the place where Jesus works that transformation. It’s at Mass he also gives us a foretaste of the eternal Temple where we, with Simeon, Anna, and all the saints, seek to behold and encounter him forever. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to move each of us, as he moved Simeon and Anna, to come to the temple on Sunday, to recognize Jesus, to rejoice in Jesus, to receive Jesus, and, transformed, to leave to reveal his light and his love to all people!

The Gospel passages on which the homily was based was: 

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