Today
we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. This feast returns usa little bit to the
Christmas season focusing in on the person of the Lord. Jesus is seen as a child, presented to the
priests according to the law of Moses. You may remember that the final plague
upon the Egyptians to force them to let the children of Israel go was the
killing of the first born. The Angel of Death came into Egypt, but passed over
the children of Israel. Since the first born of the children of Israel were
spared the plague, they were seen as belonging to the Lord. The Book of Exodus refined this in chapter 13
vs 2 to the first born male. By Jesus’
day, parents whose first child was a boy would go to the Temple with the
appropriate offering to present their child to the Lord. That is what Mary and
Joseph were doing in Temple. This would
be an occasion for celebration. Every child is loved and celebrated, but the
first child transforms the couple, husband and wife, into a family[1].
The child who is presented in the gospel is more than
the joy of his parents; He is the joy of
the world. Although the Church usually refers the first reading from
Malachi to John the Baptist, in the case of the Presentation, it is Anna and
Simeon who are the precursors, the ones who go before the Lord preparing his
way. Simeon and Anna are ready to go to
their graves in peace because they have touched God's redemption for his
people. This child is different from all the others. This child is the Lord.
Hebrews, the second reading, emphasizes that the child
presented not only is the Son of God, but is a human being. He had a full share of blood and flesh. He was tempted, and he suffered. A while back
some theologians asked whether Jesus' divine knowledge of himself would prevent
him from experiencing humanity as we do.
The answer to this is found in the First Letter of Peter: He emptied himself of his humanity, becoming
one of us in all things but sin[2].
We have in Jesus One who has the power of God because
he is the Son of God. We have in Jesus one who has the power to bring God's
peace into our lives. Still, we have in Jesus one who is as we are. He wept
when his friend Lazarus died. He laughed when he called those noisy lovable
twerps, James and John, Sons of Thunder. He was afraid during the Agony of the
Garden. He was enraged at evil. He suffered and died for us.
Jesus is the First Paraclete, the perfect intercessor
with the Power of God. From this flow two important conclusions: There is
nothing that we can share with Him that he has not personally experienced,
except that he did not experience sin, of course. He is
One of us! Second, there is nothing that He cannot do to heal our
problems. He is God among us, Emmanuel.
Today's feast helps us fight against
the tendency we all have to drift into the deism of the eighteenth century[3]. The deists believed that they were too far removed
from God for God to be intimately concerned with them. We all have the tendency
to join the deist way of thinking. We err when, so often, we think that God
really can't be concerned with us. “Why
should the infinite God be concerned with our little problems?” we often ask. To
this I ask, “Are you concerned with your children's problems, even if your
children are tiny?” Of course you are. If that is the case, then we can
understand how much more God is concerned with our difficulties. He not only
loves us; He fills us with His life. We
are infinitely more important to God than our children are important to us.
Today's feast reminds us that God is not removed from
us in His very being. Jesus, is in
effect, one of us. He knows; He cares;
He has experienced, and He loves.
Today's feast leads us to say to our Lord: Jesus you
are one of us yet you are infinite God. Heal our weakness and our pain. Give us the joy of your peace. Help us to
rely on your power. Fill us with your love. You are not just any child
presented in the Temple. You are the Son
of God. You bear the power of God. You
are also one of us. Care for us who share
the burden of life and who unite our joys and suffering to your life. You are
the Intercessor par excellence. You are
a human being and the Son of God. Help
us to rely on your love and presence in our lives and before the throne of your
Father, Amen ■
[1] Feast of the Presentation of
the Lord (A), February 2, 2014. Readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Responsorial Psalm 24:7,
8, 9, 10; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40.
[2] Cfr Phil 2:7.
[3]
Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are
sufficient to determine the existence of a Creator, accompanied with the
rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge. Deism
gained prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Age of
Enlightenment—especially in Britain, France, Germany, and the United
States—among intellectuals raised as Christians who believed in one god, but
found fault with organized religion and did not believe in supernatural events
such as miracles, the inerrancy of scriptures, or the Trinity.
