The Presentation

Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation. Our celebration of Christmas Day was 40 days ago. Christian history places today, February 2nd, as the day that Jesus was brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph, as we just heard in our Gospel. There are many themes that are worth noting.

There are hints at the hardships endured by the Holy Family, and the poverty of Mary and Joseph when they present the bare minimal offering allowed as an act of Thanksgiving to God for a newborn son. We know that the reason that they did not offer a lamb, as more wealthy families would have done, was simply because they could not afford it. The simplicity of their life is summed up in that picture “two  small birds.”

There is seen here the great Christian celebration, exemplified by the praises of the holy woman Anna, that the presence of the Lord almighty entered the Temple after a long-lamented absence. The same God who once filled the temple of Solomon with fire and light, with a cloud of glory… the same God has now become a baby, and his human family brings him to the Temple, while the Lord and giver of life reveals his glory to those who have been chosen witnesses for the moment: Simeon and Anna. So the whole Family of God, by adoption in the Holy Spirit, would bear the presence of God in the world, after Jesus created the Church.

And also on the feast I must pause to meditate on the prophecy of Simeon that the whole array of God’s world-wide plan to bring about a Kingdom of justice, peace, and salvation, would be bound up with a sorrowful event, piercing the heart of Mary with a sword of pain and suffering. It is a different description of the same event allotted for Jesus as “a sign that will be contradicted,” the Passion of Jesus. Simeon here foretells the “fall and rise of many.” Truly, it will be the overturning of the entire world, the tilling of the soil of creation, remaking it entirely to preserve it from the corruption of sin. And Simeon gives a third description of what this will look like: “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”

Indeed, every heart will be revealed in the end. The most immediate implication is that this “revelation of the true state of each heart” is tied up with the sorrows of Mary. It is when her heart is pierced that the secret rebellion of sinful man can no longer be hidden from the presence of God. “Blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the merciful.” In these Beatitudes we must join together with Mary, the perfect disciple of Jesus. We must be with her in the very event of “the sword piercing her heart.” We MUST! We must be joined to Jesus in Passion so as to be equally joined to Him in His Resurrection. This feast of the presentation I encourage you again to renew prayer devotion to Mary, which is to say, devotion to Jesus WITH Mary, or THROUGH the holy-family-bond and example of Mary