The Mutual Presentation By Which Jesus Makes Us Light, Glory and a Sign of Contradiction, Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
February 2, 2020
Mal 3:1-4, Ps 24, Heb 2:14-18, Lk 2:22-40

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The purpose of this Feast

Today we 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 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. For those who pray the Rosary, we meditate upon it at least two times a week in the fourth Joyful Mystery, but it’s great to have a chance to celebrate this feast together as a parish on Sunday and to try to encourage each other to obtain what this mystery contains in its fullness.

The point of this feast was summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that we prayed at the beginning of Mass just before the procession, which 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 continued. “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.” This awareness of the Presentation as an encounter with Christ continues throughout the Mass. In the Eucharistic Preface, we will pray that “we, too, [will] go forth rejoicing to encounter your salvation.” At the end of Mass we will ask the Lord 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 blessed are supposed to symbolize our burning love for him. At the blessing of the candles, we asked 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 here on this feast day and then on 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. It says something very important about encountering the Lord as children, as young parents, and as those advanced in years. I’d like to ponder these lessons together, knowing of course that even though the lessons may pertain a little bit more to Christians in a particular phase of human life, they do contain lessons for us at every stage of life.

Rich lessons for Seniors

Let’s begin with the rich lessons this feast has for seniors. How was it that Simeon and Anna, the two seniors in today’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 the Lord? 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, the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi in the first reading, that “suddenly there will come to the Temple the Lord whom you seek?” 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. They were waiting in holiness and in prayer, having allowed the Lord 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 of them lived their lives 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, who just as much as he was coming to Simeon at the end of his life is coming at the end of each of our lives. 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. More than anything else, Simeon and Anna shone with the light, joy, and love that can only come from Him who can give us the greatest gifts of all, Himself. Their joy, love and light were, as we see, not absent of suffering. They had both suffered in their lives, Anna lost her husband at a young age, Simeon is almost presented as a monk who had left everything else to give himself to the Lord. But they used every opportunity, even their crosses, to grow closer to God. Their example is an example to us all. 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 grow in intensify their encounter with the Lord, to respond to the Holy Spirit’s promptings drawing people to the temple by starting to come each day for daily Mass. Is there anything more important a senior could be doing on a Tuesday or a Wednesday than praying and receiving God inside? In the Responsorial Psalm today we sang, “Lift up, O gates, your lintels, … that the king of glory may come in!” As we get older, our gates should get higher for the Lord to enter more and more of our life. I’d encourage those who are still healthy to use their training and their capacity for hard work to volunteer to help make the Church stronger, so that it may become for all people more and more a place where God is encountered in private prayer, public worship, loving service and fraternity. I’d encourage them to use the gift of time to encounter Christ in the person of those in need, from family members to poor families and individuals, joining the many charitable outreaches of the Church and other organizations or inventing new ones. I’d urge them to use their ability now to plan their day without having to punch a time-card to make time to encounter Christ in sacred study, to get to know their faith better, to read the Bible, to learn God’s wisdom in such a way that their heart begins to burn for God like Simeon’s and Anna’s. The same Lord who gave them grace to live their senescence well will give all seniors that grace. The same Spirit who moved them wants to move every senior.

Rich lessons for young parents

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 every gift needs to be willing to be given back to God 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, consecrating the Consecrated One to the divine service, and showing that fulfilling the law of the Lord and consecrating our loved ones to him is a path of life! From Jesus’ perspective, as we saw in today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, “he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way,” and so, just as they were presented in the temple on the 40th day and consecrated to God’s service, so was he. God the Father wants every child to be offered back to Him in Christ. He wants them to present Christ and their child as a joint offering in the temple. 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; 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 presented in the temple, but 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 their life in accordance with this blessing. Baptism is not a one-day ceremony without consequences. Parents are called continue making that consecration in practical ways, helping the child to view his or her life within the light of God, discovering the vocation God has given, and saying yes to it. This means first raising their children in ways of faith. 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 to their home and there help them to grow in wisdom, strength and the favor of the Lord, assisting them to live according to their consecration. In the baptismal rite, it says that parents are supposed to be the “first teachers of their children in the ways of the faith,” “by word and example,” and prays that they may become the “best of teachers.” Children, it is said, learn more by their eyes than by their ears, from observing their parents example more than listening to what they command. Children learn by seeing their parents pray, by observing their parents reading the Bible, by witnessing their parents drop to their knees in thanksgiving to God for blessings received, by noticing their parents going to confession, by beholding their parents make the right moral choices. St. Francis de Sales, the great bishop of Geneva 400 years ago whose feast the Church celebrated on January 24, said that parents need to speak to their children about God and to God about their children, both helping them to grow in loving awe of the God who created them, entered the world to redeem them, accompanies them through life and calls them to join him in his mission of saving the world, and praying for them, that they may respond with loving God and others to the full.

Rich lessons for children 

Finally we turn to what children can learn from this feast today — and, considering that we’re all God’s children and infants in the light of eternity, we all have something to learn. 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. We’re first 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 in baptism. When we pray the Mass, we unite ourselves to Jesus anew and present him together with us, head and body, Bridegroom and bride, to the Father in joint consecration. In today’s feast, there’s a special symbolism involved in how we’re supposed to be living out our continuous encounter with Jesus. Over the centuries, Christians have called popularly called this feast Candlemas or “Mass of Candles.” We begin Mass with the procession of lit candles, a liturgical act that not only renews something very important from our baptism, but also indicates to us in a special way our Christian mission. At our baptism, we received a lit baptismal candle and the priest said, “Receive the Light of Christ!,” telling us to keep that light burning brightly. Jesus, as Simeon says in today’s Gospel, is a “light of revelation to the Gentiles.” He is the Light of the World. But, as he told us 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. Our baptismal candle is lit from the Pascal or Easter candle, which points to the reality that we receive our light from Christ, who wants to make us candles, taking his light to the whole world, a world in which there often is so much darkness. He wants to make us his light and have us illumine others with the light of faith, just as you helped to light the candles of those beside you earlier today. We processed 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. Today is a great day to ponder whether our lives are living up to this symbolism. Are we really coming to the Lord to be lit on fire with him so we might go on procession bringing that holy light out into the world? Candlemas is a day on which Jesus, as we encounter him here in this temple, seeks to renew us as his light so that, as he told us in the Sermon on the Mount, our light might shine before others who, in seeing our good deeds, may give glory to our Father in heaven. Jesus is indeed the Light of revelation to the Gentiles, but the way he intends to bring that light to all the nations is by sending us, one candle at a time, burning with his holy flame, to light everyone the whole world ablaze with the light of his truth and the warmth of his love. That’s what the Holy Spirit wants to move us and help us to do.

Greater gift than Simeon received

Today, 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. Today we 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. The Mass is the place in which Jesus does that work. It’s here 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. How lucky we are that the Holy Spirit has moved each of us, as he moved Simeon and Anna, to come to the temple today, to recognize him, to rejoice in him, and to receive him, and, transformed leave to reveal his light and his love to all people!

The readings for today’s Mass were: