Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

There is something kind of confusing about the almost haphazard way in which the liturgical readings seem to be dealing with images of the life of Christ. In a fairly short period of time we have moved from the infancy narratives of the Christmas and Epiphany season, to the abruptly adult images of the first few Sundays of Ordinary time, and now, this weekend, we are again presented with the image of Christ as an infant.

Well, there is a reason for this sort of back-up this weekend, and it is that this year the calendar is such that the Sunday falls on February the second, a date which for a good many centuries in Catholic tradition has been celebrated as a special feast, now called the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, a feast given such weight that it over-rides the normal calendar of Sunday observance.

It is an interesting thing to speculate as to why it is that one particular feast will capture popular imagination, and be celebrated consistently, faithfully, over hundreds of years, while others will come and go in popularity, sometimes even dropping out of the liturgical calendar altogether. One possible explanation, one which seems to hold true enough, is that those rituals which somehow seem to focus on the blessing, the sanctification of home life, family life, those stay high in popularity, while those that deal more with simply a doctrine, an idea, fade in and out. That certainly holds true in this case. For centuries the feast of the Presentation of Christ has been the occasion for the public blessing of candles, candles used not only in public worship, but those used in the home as well. And until fairly recently, of course, candles were a staple of home life, a necessity. And so for the liturgy to center its attention around such a common ordinary thing would seem to have been a pretty good guarantee that the ritual would stay high in popular esteem. It is no accident, certainly, that the ritual of the blessing of throats, observed, again for centuries, on February 3rd, the feast of St. Blaise, it is no accident that that ritual would use candles as the instrument of blessing.

I said that this feast is titled the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple. And so it is. But for some time, in fact right up till after the Second Vatican Council, it was know as the feast of the Purification of Mary. As such, the focus was much more explicitly on her, and even more explicitly, on the very physical, ordinary act of giving birth, and Mary's willingness to relate that act to her life of faith, to see it as part of such a life. Again, an experience common to a very great many believers, over a very great many centuries. The name of the day was changed, clearly enough, to avoid giving the impression that in the mind of the Church there was anything at all impure or degrading about the act of childbirth, anything that would need purifying. Because, of course, that is not the case.

In actual fact, the word, "Purification" was never a terribly good title. The English word really doesn't reflect the nature of the ritual Mary undergoes in the first few verses of this Gospel reading. It was a very old ritual, part of Hebrew law virtually from the time of Moses, which called for the offering of ritual prayer and sacrifice by a woman forty days after giving birth. And the Hebrew word used to name that ritual really doesn't mean purify, in the English sense. It means rather something closer to "make everything right again," "set things back on track." It was a ritual new mothers shared with people who had been wounded, people who had been sick, people who had suffered accidents. The heart of it seems to flow from the very ancient, even primitive notion that colors a good bit of the Old Testament Law, the notion that blood is sacred to the Lord. And so anything that involved the shedding of blood, no matter how noble, how unintentional the thing may have been, put one at risk, at least, of even unconsciously offering offense to God. And so the ritual of purification, or setting everything back to right was really the believer's way of publicly, ritualistically stating that no offense was intended, nothing has gone wrong, this event, even involving the shedding of blood is seen as God's will, is assumed by the believer into the life of faith. So far from degrading the act of childbirth, the ritual of Purification actually did just the opposite, enhanced it, emphasized it as a sacred thing, sacred enough to rightly involve even the shedding of blood, and as such something to be publicly offered to and accepted by God.

But the purification of Mary was only half of the ritual being observed by the Holy Family in this Gospel passage. At the same time, they were observing another decree of the Law of Moses, the precept that the first-born male offspring of everything alive, animal as well as human, was to be consecrated to the Lord, literally given to Him. That too was a very ancient precept, in place since the time of Moses, and the Exodus from Egypt, an Exodus made possible according to the faith of the people, by the hand of the Lord who slew the first born male children of the Egyptians, on the night of the Passover. And so the law calling for the offering of the first born male to God was meant very literally. They were to be offered, slain in sacrifice. And that was done with animals. But even from most primitive times, the time of Abraham and even earlier, a thousand years before Moses, the notion of human sacrifice was utterly repugnant to the Hebrews, totally opposed to their understanding of God. So the provision was made in Mosaic law to allow for the redemption, the buying back of human children with the sacrifice of another animal, for poor people such as Mary and Joseph, the two pigeons or doves described in the Gospel.

So in all of this, that sounds so complicated, even strange to us, Joseph and Mary were simply acting in accord with what they were, faithful law-abiding Hebrews, devoted to the Law of Moses, and the sure promise of salvation offered by that Law. Luke, the author of this passage makes quite a point of that. Luke is the only one of the four evangelists that records this incident, as he is the only one who records the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth a bit before this, and the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple just following. And he makes quite a point of it, the validity of the Law, in order to make the next point, a point about Christ, Who he is, and what He came to do. Because the very next scene in this passage also flows from a precept of the Mosaic Law. It was that in any proposition proposed under the Law, if two witness could be found to freely testify to the truth of the proposition, it was to held as true, by Law.

And so Luke does just that. He presents two witnesses, Simeon and Anna. And the testimony they offer is that this child, Christ, is the One foretold by Isaiah, the One Who is to come, the Messiah. This is a very carefully structured passage, as is most of Luke's Gospel, and the message is clear. What is being said is true, with the uncontestable truth of the Law itself. Those who would reject Christ, fail to respond to the truth would be opposing themselves not simply to another self-proclaimed prophet, but to God's own will, God's own truth. So he sets the stage in no uncertain terms, and offers even the infant Christ almost as a challenge to those who seek the truth, who hunger for salvation. Here it is. How do you respond to that?

But if Luke is firm and clear in his presentation of Christ, he is not naive as to his expectations of the people's reaction. Many would not accept the truth. Some would actively reject it, a great many more simply wouldn't care. Luke was a physician, an observer of people, and he knew very well how human nature worked. He knew that faith was a demanding thing, a difficult path, and that many, out of fear, laziness, self-indulgence, simply would not take it. And so there is almost a darker side to this outwardly joyful ritual. In the mouth of Simeon, Luke puts the words, "This child is destined to be the downfall as well as the rise of many... He shall be opposed." And then that strange, haunting, personal word to Mary, "Your own soul a sword shall pierce." But in either case, acceptance or rejection, Christ is the truth, and measured by Him, the thoughts of many hearts, what people are really made of, will be laid bare, made obvious.

And then Luke tempers the mood a bit with the second of the two witnesses. Anna. It is interesting to see the virtues with which Luke describes these two people. It is sort of like a compendium of all virtues. Simeon is described as just and pious, well versed in the Law and Scriptures. Those were social virtues for the Hebrews, especially justice, concrete ways of dealing with other people. So Simeon was probably an active man, active in the Temple, in society, in business. Very much a man immersed in his time.

But Anna is pictured in rather a different light. She is pictured as an old woman, experienced, one familiar with life, and its hardships and challenges as well as its satisfactions. She had known marriage and family life, and she had known solitude. As a widow, she would have known poverty. A woman without a man to support her was in a risky position in her society, very much dependent on charity, sometimes for life itself. She would have known from experience the goodness of other people, and their harshness as well. And so the virtues Anna would have brought with her to that meeting in the Temple would have been patience, years of it. Faithfulness, self-discipline, and courage. Quieter virtues than those of Simeon, perhaps, but every bit as saving.

But whatever their differences in background and virtue may have been, whatever their individual strengths and weaknesses, the result was the same. They were both brought to that place in the Temple, and there blessed with the Spirit of prophecy. Prophecy in the most classic Old Testament sense, the ability to see beneath the surface of the obvious, the ability to see, and to proclaim openly, what is really happening, in what seem to be the most commonplace, ordinary of events. Literally, to give witness to the truth about one's life, the experiences that make up that life, even when that experience seems to be nothing more extraordinary than a young couple doing what more than likely dozens of young couples had already done that morning, fulfilling the rituals of the Law. What seemed to be was, in the eyes of the prophets Simeon and Anna, only the merest fraction of what truly was. And it was to that fuller truth that they testified.

So. Perhaps there is a sense in which it is true to say that prophecy is the first role of every believer. Perhaps we too are urged by a constant call to see beneath the surface, to read and to proclaim openly what is really happening in our lives. How much of what may seem to us so many chance meetings in the Temple, or the school or the home or downtown, are in fact as much of a summons to us it was to Simeon and Anna, to be a witness to the fact that Christ is growing in what we do, what we see, no matter how ordinary, even difficult it may seem to be. In the testimony of Simeon and Anna, Luke proclaimed the final fulfillment of the Law, the Old Covenant. We are the people of the New Covenant, and in the testimony of our words, our lives, we must do no less.

Readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40