Presentation of the Lord
Feb. 2, 2014
Luke 2: 22-32
Iona College, New Rochelle
“When the days
were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and
Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord” (Luke 2: 22).
40 days after
Christmas, we return to a story related to the birth of Jesus. The Law of Moses stipulated that 40 days
after the birth of a male child, his mother was to go to the Temple to be
purified from the ritual uncleanness associated with childbirth; contact with
human blood made one unclean, excluded from worship with the community. As a Greek from Antioch (we think), Luke
wasn’t entirely familiar with Jewish law and custom, and is simply mistaken
when he implies that “they”—either Mary and Joseph or Mary and Jesus—had to be
purified. Once purified, mothers could
resume their place in the community.
The Law also
required that firstborn sons be redeemed, as the firstborn of the Hebrews had
been saved in Egypt when the angel of death passed over the land and struck
down the firstborn of man and beast thruout the land, except in the homes of
the Hebrews whose doorposts had been marked by the blood of the paschal
lambs. Thus Luke says that Mary and
Joseph were presenting Jesus to the Lord.
He omits any reference to the price of redemption, which was 5 shekels,
distinct from the purification sacrifice.
Again, he may not have known of this legal requirement. Or he may have been making a theological
statement by omission: the redeemer of humanity
was not himself in need of redemption,
On the other
hand, Luke is careful always to present Mary and Joseph, as well as Jesus, as
observers of the Law, which is in fact the reason for their going up to
Jerusalem on this occasion. That leads
us to understand an important point: our
relationship with God must include observance.
In some circles today, it’s fashionable to be “spiritual” but not
“religious.” To be sure, legal
observance—whether it’s Sunday worship or Lenten fasting or the entire Ten
Commandments or anything else—isn’t the sum total of religion. Religion is fundamentally about our
relationship with God. But external
observance is the 1st, necessary step in that relationship, like flowers or
sweet words between spouses. Without
externals, religion or relationships dry up.
Jesus tells us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John
14:15). Religion is public, not only
private. It involves who we are and
everything we do.
Part of the
rite of purification was the offering of a sacrifice, either a lamb and a
pigeon, or for the poor, 2 pigeons. Luke
tells us that Mary offered 2 pigeons, and thus that the family was poor. In the gospels, and the rest of the NT for
that matter, we see Jesus’ constant attention to the poor, the neglected, the
outsiders. He identifies with the poor
and the neglected, right from his birth in borrowed lodgings, the attention
given him by lowly shepherds, and his exile in Egypt, thru his association with
outcasts during his ministry, thru his parable of the last judgment (Matt
25:31-46), to his death on a cross, stripped naked and almost completely
abandoned, and his burial in a borrowed tomb.
Hence the Church’s attention to the poor and the sick, to the homeless
and the unemployed, to refugees and immigrants, and her insistence that the
well-off share from their abundance, just as Jesus has shared his divinity and
gift of eternal life with us.
Presentation of the Lord window Our Lady of the Valley Church Orange, N.J. |
If the 1st
scene in the gospel passage is the Holy Family’s coming to the Temple and
offering their sacrifice, the 2d scene is Simeon’s arrival. Luke calls him “righteous and devout” (2:25),
like Zechariah and Elizabeth (cf. 1:6) and Joseph of Arimathea (23:50), and
here Luke tells us what makes Simeon “righteous and devout”: he was “awaiting the consolation of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit was upon him” (2:25).
“The
consolation of Israel” means the Messiah, the one anointed by God’s Spirit to
comfort his people and redeem them, as in the 1st lines of the 2d part of the
Book of Isaiah, nicknamed the “Book of Consolation”: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says
your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her that her servitude is at an end, her guilt is expiated”
(40:1-2), or in the 17th-century English of the KJV employed by George
Frederick Handel, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry
unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
Simeon is truly
looking for salvation, and thus he is open to the action of the Holy Spirit in
his life, and the Holy Spirit leads him to the redeemer. Mary and Joseph have come to the Temple, in
part, to redeem their son; but they hear their son announced as the
redeemer: “my eyes have seen your
salvation, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory for your people
Israel” (2:30,32). This child is the
light—the daybreak sung by Zechariah in his canticle a little earlier in Luke’s
gospel—who will lead God’s people out of “darkness and death’s shadow” (1:78-79). He is the light announced by the angels amid
the glory of the Lord, “who is Messiah and Lord” (2:9-11)—not for Israel only,
but also for the Gentiles, Simeon says, for he will fulfill Isaiah’s
prophecies, e.g., “I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a
light for the nations” (42:6).
Simeon teaches
us how to find the Lord: to look
sincerely for him and to be open to where the Spirit will lead us: “He came in the Spirit into the temple”
(2:27). So, as I said earlier, we must
be in a relationship with the Lord, must be speaking with him, listening to
him: in Scripture reading, in the sacred
liturgy, in prayer; opening our hearts, our minds, our souls to him, bringing
him our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows, our problems and our praises;
and then allowing the Holy Spirit to settle upon us (that same Spirit with
which we were endowed in Baptism and Confirmation) and to comfort us, guide us,
enlighten us.
After all that,
Simeon was ready to “go in peace.” He
was speaking of death—which we pray the Holy Spirit will enable us to face
peacefully when it’s time, because we have seen the Lord’s salvation. But whatever we do, whatever we speak,
whatever we decide, wherever we go, we can do in peace after speaking to the
Lord about it and letting his light guide us.
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