By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
February 2, 2020: The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40
We have been prepared during the last week towards the celebration today! The reflections on David’s dedication to the Lord, the fall of Saul and the eventual fall of David…all these communicated to us the nature of our vocation as human persons: that we are called to belong to the Lord. They also brought out to us the weakness with which we have to constantly struggle in order to be faithful to this call. And finally, the feast today assures that we are not alone in this struggle, the Lord lives with us, all along.
THE MEMORY: The memory that we celebrate today is that of the Lord who comes, who comes into His temple! A beautiful moment so picturesquely presented by Luke. The expectations, the entry, the enchantment and the extravaganza that was witnessed in the Temple as Mary and Joseph bring the child into the temple premises. We celebrate this memory, the memory of the Lord coming to us, the Lord of the world entering our world. It is always so important to keep in mind that moment, those moments special when the Lord in some way encountered us – through a word that we heard, or a person we met, or a event that shook us, or an experience that all of a sudden called our attention. That moment, that memory could be an extraordinary source of meaning and strength.
THE MEANING: The memory that we celebrate has a specific meaning, that the Lord comes to be like us! The Lord chose to share this world with us in His incarnation and became like us, like us in everything, except sin, says the letter to the Hebrews (4:15). The Lord chose to suffer, the Lord chose to be tempted, the Lord chose to undergo the same struggle as each of us do! We are not alone in our struggles, and we are not at the mercies of an insensitive, arrogant boss type of a God – No, we are in the hands of an empathising God, an understanding Father, an embracing mother, a supporting brother! What else do we need? Why should we fret? Could anything really remove the rug from under our feet? Pluck up courage, stand up to yourself, keep working your way towards goodness and at the summit of it lies our union with God – that is the meaning offered to us.
THE MISSION: The meaning of this memory, leads us to a deeper understanding of the Mission of the Lord who comes. The Lord comes to be like us, that we may become like Him. When John proclaims in his Gospel, “to those who believed in him, he gave the power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12), he underlined this specific mission of the Messiah – to make us like him! It is a ‘power’, that the Saviour gives us, to become children of God. And it is a ‘becoming’, a growth, a continual progress, a non-stop process of maturity, of clarifying our priorities, our values and our choices. The mission is life-long, because our very lives are our mission, not merely what we do at certain points of time. Our life, lived in loving union with the Lord and ever worthy of the Lord’s love, and gradually becoming like the One who has called and commissioned us is our primary mission.
If we have to become like him we have to first “Let Him enter” when He comes. The responsorial psalm invites us to open the portals of our heart and let the King enter. And when the Lord enters, He enters to purify us…like the fuller who washes the linen white, like the silver smith who burns the silver to purity, like the gush of water that enters to wash away all sediments of impurities, the Lord enters. At times it can be painful to be washed, to be refined, and to be flushed of our naive attachments and egoistic pleasures. But without those, there is no purification or refinement. Speaking of faith, in the Apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis says, “God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us” (n.12). The feast of Presentation reminds us of this dimension of our faith – to offer to the Lord everything of ourselves!
The Lord becomes like us to challenge us to become like him. Jesus lived like us, but every moment of his life was a declaration to the One who sent him: “Here I come to do your will” (Heb 10:7)… that self submission to God begins in the event that we celebrate today.
Let us pray for the Christian Parents that they, like the Holy Family, may offer themselves and their family into the hands of God, who has called them into loving existence. Let us pray for the Religious who have offered themselves to the Lord, that their consecration might ever be uncompromising.
Let us pray for each of us, that we may welcome the Lord who comes to us, who becomes like us, that we may learn to become like Him!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.