The Presentation of Our Lord

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Until the day came for them to be purified in keeping with the Law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord” (Luke 2:22). Today is the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord.

By the Jewish custom, after a certain number of days, the mother had to be purified after her birth and the child had to be presented in the temple. Joseph and Mary went up to the temple to fulfill this custom of the Law.

Our Lady didn't have to be purified; her birth was a virgin birth. Yet, many of the saints like to comment on how she wanted to submit to the Law. She didn't want to be above the Law; didn't look for privileges.

She and Joseph had this great desire to be very ordinary, to be like everybody else, to fulfill all the precepts of the Law, even though that cost an effort. They didn't want to be an exception. This is a very beautiful aspect of the Holy Family that we find on this particular feast day.

“Observing,” we're told, “what is written in the Law of the Lord, every firstborn male must be consecrated to the Lord, and also to offer in sacrifice, in accordance with what is prescribed in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:23-24).

Together with this effort to go to Jerusalem to fulfill this Law, to go out of their way, to make that sacrifice and bring up to the Holy City, they also had to offer in addition a sacrifice.

Poor families would have offered these two young pigeons or a pair of turtle doves. Wealthier families perhaps offered a bigger animal, but they made this sacrifice.

We see this further desire to fulfill down to the last detail what was prescribed in the Law.

We ask Our Lord for that grace to have the same sort of desire to fulfill the Law that God has prescribed for us, the Ten Commandments, the spirit that God wants us to live by, the spirit of charity, the spirit of obedience, the spirit of generosity and industriousness, the spirit that somehow we detect in this house, in the formation that we receive, the criteria that are there whereby we live, the lifestyle, the spirit that God has wanted for our life a little bit.

We see the value of these things. We grow in our heart and our soul in things that are good and things that are right. We learn. We keep ourselves open to that learning process that God has wanted for us.

“Now in Jerusalem there was a man named Simeon. He was an upright and devout man” (Luke 2:25).

God makes use of Simeon, a holy man, a just man of the Old Testament, you might call him. Obviously, he was used to going to the temple. He was a man of God, a man of prayer. And “he looked forward to the restoration of Israel and the Holy Spirit rested on him” (Luke 2:25).

It's a rather beautiful term, “the Holy Spirit rested on him.” God spoke through him. He was close to God—a man of wisdom and goodness and of grace.

“It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had set eyes on the Christ of the Lord” (Luke 2:26). He was in reception of a special revelation that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him in a special way.

The Holy Spirit speaks to each one of us, guides us along the pathway of our Christian vocation, leads us here, leads us there; helps us to understand this idea, to detect some other deeper meaning in something that we've read or we've heard or we've seen. It's all the time enlightening us in our professional studies, in other areas of our life, leading us forward.

But apart from that he had this special revelation: that he would see Christ the Lord. It was a very special gift that God had promised him. He must have been very close to God in a special way.

“Prompted by the Spirit, he came to the temple” (Luke 2:27). Probably he came to the temple quite frequently. But on this occasion again there was a special prompting.

There may be times in the course of our life when we find ourselves in a special place at a special time, in a special moment, when we see things or we hear things. Sometimes we might call it, what a coincidence! or, what an accident!

With supernatural outlook we know there are no coincidences. This is the grace of God working in our life.

Every so often we have to try and look at what Our Lord calls the signs of the times in our life. We're not in Alaska, we're not in Tokyo. We're in Nairobi in the year 2021. We're in this house.

God has brought me here to the spirit of Opus Dei to know a little bit more about it. Maybe I'm studying in Kibondeni.

These things are a little bit like the signs of the times. What is the Spirit prompting in you? What is the pathway that God is laying out in front of you? What things does He want you to learn, to observe with your eyes?

Every day of our life, every hour, there are promptings of the Spirit. Promptings to pray. If you're here in this meditation this morning, you've been prompted by the Spirit.

We can ask Our Lord for the grace to react to those promptings. God has a work in our mind, our heart and soul. When He puts an idea into our head or a desire to do certain things, which are good things, we have to try and have the correspondence to react, to say, ‘Yes, Lord!’ like Our Lady did: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

“And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the Law required, he took him in his arms and blessed God” (Luke 2:27b-28).

“He took him in his arms.” There's something rather affectionate about this. He held the Christ Child. He embraced Him. It must have been a very special moment in his life. It's what he had been looking forward to all the time.

He realizes that ‘the Holy Spirit has led me here at this particular moment, to be here to receive this young couple. This child is the child I've been dreaming about, praying to, for decades, the whole of my life. The meaning and the purpose of my life is tied up in this moment.’

There may be also special moments in our life when we realize somehow ‘God is speaking to me.’ This is a special moment. It has a lot of consequences. This moment is going to leave its mark for the rest of my life.

I've just heard some very special words of wisdom, or somebody has said something special to me, or something has happened that has touched my heart, my life, my soul in a special way.

This moment was very important in his life. God was speaking to him. God was present to him. He was in his arms, the Christ Child entrusting Himself to the arms of this good man.

“And he blessed God and he said, ‘Now, Master, you are letting your servant go in peace as you promised; for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have made ready in the sight of the nations’” (Luke 2:28-31).

Simeon pours forth these beautiful words, inspired also by the Holy Spirit.

Every priest, every day, is supposed to pray a prayer that's called the breviary, which is a certain number of the Psalms. It takes roughly half an hour to get through.

At the end of that, each day, part of the prayer that he says in what's called the Night Prayer or Compline are the words of Simeon. The words of Simeon have been written in order to be repeated by every priest all over the world for all eternity.

As the priest retires for the night, he says, “Now, Master, you are letting your servant go in peace as you promised; for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have made ready in the sight of the nations.”

Simeon isn't just holding this baby, this Christ Child. He's understanding who this baby is. “My eyes have seen the salvation” (Luke 2:30). Christ is the salvation. Christ is everything. John Paul II liked to say, “In Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life” (cf. Pope John Paul II, Homily, World Youth Day, August 14, 1993).

See, what do you yearn for? You sometimes dream about winning the lottery. If I have the winning ticket for the lottery, and then I'm told, you've won the lottery. You might hold the ticket in your hand and think a little bit like Simeon. This is my salvation. The lottery for the rest of my life. All my problems are solved.

We might think in some moment, we get our diploma or our degree from our college, and we think, now this is the beginning of the rest of my life. The meaning and the purpose of my life is tied up in this little piece of paper.

But then what happens at our death? The lottery is no more use to us. If we win the lottery when we're 79 years of age, as I heard somebody did once, somebody I know, they gave it all to Mother Teresa. What am I going to do with this lottery at this stage of my life? I can't buy an airplane and fly around the world. I can't do a whole pile of things.

If you look to those moments beyond our death, if you look to eternity, my soul.…my soul is immortal.

Because Simeon was a holy man, he was used to going to the temple. He was very aware of the immortality of his soul and of the care that he had to take of his soul, and that his soul had an eternal destiny.

That's what he's looking for. That's the real lottery. We are called to be spiritual millionaires in this world and in the next. That's the real McCoy that we have to focus on.

That's a little bit what Simeon is grasping this moment. “My eyes have seen the salvation which you have made ready in the sight of the nations; a light of revelation for the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32).

These are special words to say about a little baby that's been put into your arms. “A light of revelation for the Gentiles.” A light that has been lit. Christ is the light, and for the whole of humanity, the Gentiles, all the non-Jews, this is the solution, this is the answer.

For us also, in Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life. Like Simeon, our goal is to draw close to the Christ Child, to the Blessed Sacrament, to Christ on the Cross—through our prayer, through our spiritual reading, through our presence of God, through offering up our work every day, through seeing that Christ has called me to be a missionary, through my Baptism, to announce Him to other people, and in announcing Him to announce a light, an answer, the truth that everybody is looking for.

John Paul II liked to say that every human person suffers from a hole in the heart, and that hole can only be filled by God.

We spend our life running after all sorts of things to fill that hole—maybe romance, maybe money, maybe all sorts of things—but only God can fill that hole in our heart.

Simeon in this moment realizes that this is the answer, this is the Christ Child, this is the person who can fill the greatest yearnings of my heart.

“For the glory of your people Israel.” The words of Simeon ring down through the nations, through the decades, through the centuries. This is what we're after. Simeon has a treasure and he's aware of that.

This is the treasure that's worth happening, the promise that God has made to me for all eternity. Then, from focusing on Simeon and these great words that he's saying, and this great moment of realization, as he's sort of looking into eternity and holding the Christ Child, the Gospel narrative switches back to Joseph and Mary.

We're told, “As the child's father and mother were wondering at the things that were being said about him…” (Luke 2:33). Here is Simeon waxing on with wonderful words, and you get the impression that Joseph and Mary are standing there in awe. They almost don't quite understand what Simeon is saying. They almost should be the people that are saying the words that Simeon is saying. But somehow, he's revealing to them new things.

This is a little like a reminder of what happened with the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20) and with the Magi (Matt. 2:1-12). They're realizing God is also speaking to them.

The Holy Spirit is using Simeon to confirm to them again what the angels and the shepherds and the Magi have revealed to them: the special nature of this child; the special nature of their vocation, of their calling.

“And at this they're wondering.” If you look back at the birth of the Christ Child and the liturgy around that time, you'll find the word “wonder” appears very frequently in the liturgy.

Joseph and Mary were wondering. We're called to wonder at the great mystery of the Incarnation. Little children wonder. They see things and they don't quite understand. There's a mystery about this particular thing.

I had a sister once who told me she used to bring her child to some coffee shop someplace. There was some sort of a little fountain in the coffee shop and people would throw coins into the fountain and make a wish or something.

Then, she told me, she brought him one day to the church, and she put a coin into his hand, so she could put the money into the poor box. But before he got there, they came to the holy water font.

When the kid saw the holy water font, he threw the coin into the holy water font, because he had learned to throw coins into the water. It was there that she sort of realized that he had made an association between the two things.

The children see little things of water and they have learned how to react in a certain way. And they have a coin in their hand, so they throw it into the water. They wonder. They don't quite get the message. They have to learn.

“The child's father and mother were wondering.” We are called to wonder: to wonder at the great truths of our faith, the beauty of the things that God places before us—the beauty of nature, the beauty of creation, the beauty of truth, the splendor of truth. Our lives are lives of wondering as we have opened up to us the wonderful plans that God places before us.

“And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother...” (Luke 2:34). He blesses them. Curious. You might think that they ought to bless him. But he is the one who blesses them. He is the instrument of God in this moment to bring special messages to them, to encourage them in their vocation, confirm to them the words that they have heard already.

They see God acting in a special way in their life in this moment. The fact that they have come into the temple at this particular time and Simeon happens to be there also—this is no coincidence.

God is acting in our life every day. All the time as well. Speaking to us. Leading us to wonder, to get the message, to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. And in various stages of our life, God gives us another piece of the jigsaw puzzle so that it all fits together. There is a plan. There is a purpose.

“And he said to Mary his mother: ‘Look, he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is opposed and contradicted. And a sword will pierce your soul too, so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare’” (Luke 2:34-35). Simeon says these beautiful words that we have just read.

Then he gathers himself up and addresses Our Lady. Up to now nobody has addressed Our Lady in the way that Simeon is going to address her. He is saying something very clear, very important, very deep, very significant.

“Look: he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel.” He is talking about salvation: the purpose of the Christ Child. The whole mystery of the Incarnation and of the redemption.

Notice he is not speaking to Joseph. Joseph is in the background. In these days and hours and years of Joseph, all the time we try and have that eye for Joseph. He is present. He is silent but he is in the background taking everything in, having the bigger picture, being the support of Our Lady in this moment, realizing that he is not the major player in this particular scene.

He knows how to be in the background. But somehow, he is sort of helping everything to happen. He must have helped Our Lady to get there, organized the child and the transport, all the basic material things that needed to be done to make this event happen.

We can associate ourselves very much with Joseph: the deeper humility, passing unnoticed, making a serious contribution; making things happen and loving every moment of it; fulfilling his role; being very happy; thanking God that he is a witness to such wonderful events.

And all the time, with the things that he is hearing also, Our Lady is going up and up and up in his estimation as he realizes more and more the greatness of Mary, the dignity of Mary, the role of Mary, and who it is that has been entrusted to his care, not just the Christ Child, but also Our Lady.

“Destined to be a sign that is contradicted.” Christ is a sign of contradiction. John Paul II, I think, has a book of that title: Sign of Contradiction. As followers of Christ, we are called to be a sign of contradiction in the world.

We shouldn't be surprised at contradictions—things that happen that seem to go against what we wanted to happen. When we encounter a little bit of difficulty—misunderstandings, miscommunications—all these are good signs of the cross in our daily life. There may be many signs of contradictions in the course of our life.

This is the first time that Our Lady is hearing these words. The previous messengers that came to her announced “tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

The shepherds spoke the words that the angels had announced to them. The Magi came following the star with their finest treasures. It's all a story of great joy.

But now Simeon speaks about contradictions—the cross—and this sort of completes the picture a little bit. The cross has to be there in our life. But the cross is not a punishment; Christ blesses us with the cross.

We can try to learn to thank Our Lord for the cross, the things we find difficult—when we find a certain subject that we're studying a bit difficult; or a certain task that we're given to do a little bit difficult; or certain instructions that we find a bit more difficult to master; or a job that we have to summon up a little more effort to do; or to get up in the morning; or to become a more spiritual person, inculcating in our life a little bit of spiritual reading or something; or learning a new virtue, being on time or more ordered in our cabinet; or meeting deadlines; or being honest, not allowing ourselves to tell any lies.

The little demands that Our Lord may make on us in order to be better—often that growth comes in and through the cross. The contradictions: laughing at our self, at our miseries. Or learning how to grow, to listen to what's said to us.

“And a sword will pierce your soul too.” Simeon talks about the sword. Some translations say, “A sword will pierce your heart.” Simeon predicts the broken heart of Mary.

Our Lady could be named the patron saint of all broken hearts. That sword is going to pierce her heart beside the Cross. A physical lance pierced the side of Jesus (John 19:34) but a spiritual lance pierced the heart of Mary on the Cross.

It may be that someday in your life you will have a broken heart. There are many broken hearts in this world. But we have the answer to broken hearts: Christ on the Cross and Our Lady beside the cross. They can mend all broken hearts. You just have to give them all the pieces.

Even if you don't have a broken heart, God may bring somebody in contact with you who has a broken heart. Because you're close to Our Lady and to Jesus, you will know how to help them to mend that broken heart. All broken hearts can be mended.

A famous spiritual writer says, “When God allows hearts to be broken, it's because he wants to enter into them a little more” (cf. Fulton J. Sheen, Through the Year with Fulton Sheen). The world is full of broken hearts. We don't have to worry about it, because Our Lady has been there before.

We find our peace and our serenity and our joy with our broken hearts in our unity to Christ and to Mary—through the rosary, through little acts of piety. We come to see why Our Lord has allowed our heart to be broken. It's all a pathway to God.

“And a sword will pierce your soul too, so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare” (Luke 2:35).

There's a purpose. It's not for nothing that Our Lord allows hearts to be broken. Our heart might be broken by the loss of a loved one; or by a dream that has gone sour, isn't going to happen; or some major change in our life. That's what life is all about.

Our Lady begins to learn about the cross. We're told later that “she kept all these things carefully in her heart” (Luke 2:51). The words of Simeon must have stayed with her every day, every hour, and she knew that sword was coming.

She understood even more than Simeon the purpose of this Christ Child—Redemption, the Incarnation—but also, the great joy that was there to be in and through those things, because through her, the Mediatrix of all races, the whole of humanity was going to have heaven opened up for her.

It wasn't just for nothing. It wasn't just the suffering. It was the whole reality of salvation. The sword of the cross must have also brought a joy to Our Lady's soul.

All the time in the background, St. Joseph is there listening to all of these words, taking it in, grasping a little better too, the great enterprise in which he's caught up in, so that he can give his whole heart and soul and mind to this great business that God has placed him in.

We can ask Our Lady that feast days like today might lead us a little bit closer to her, that we too might have that same reaction that she had, to treasure all these things carefully in our heart, that we too might come to understand a little more the swords that God may have in mind for us, the crosses, so that in and through them we might go forward, learning.

Like St. Joseph, we might all the time grow in that humility, that joy, in our calling, where God has placed us, so that like him we might go forward with Our Lady along the pathway of our vocation.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW