During Ordinary Time, the solemnities and feasts of Our Lord take precedence over the Sunday celebration. Since the Presentation falls on a weekend, it supersedes the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The other two feasts sharing the same privilege are the Transfiguration and the Exaltation of the Cross. Coincidentally, this year, the Exaltation of the Cross falls on a Sunday too.
A feast on a Sunday might feel like an interruption but it actually presents a good segue into how we can scrutinise more profoundly the person of Jesus Christ.
Apart from the Presentation, Feb 2nd is also called the Purification of Mary. How can we understand the Mosaic tradition which considers a mother unclean for forty days after the birth of a son? The most humble Mother of God, despite her immaculate conception, submitted to the law and at the end of that period, she went to the Temple to offer a sacrifice for her purification and also to present the Boy to God.
Our challenge is that we have associated purification with the notion of moral impurity. This is partly due to our knowledge of biology having advanced to the point that this taboo does not sit too well with our current understanding. To understand Mary’s act purification, consider it from the perspective of cleansing the Sacred Vessels after Holy Communion.
The purification towards the end of Mass is not an indication that something impure has previously touched the vessels. How can it be when both the paten and chalice carried the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ during Mass? The act of purifying the vessel is a rite undertaken to prepare the vessel for future use. A woman’s greatest power is to conceive and bear life and her purification after birth is to prepare her for the possibility of a future conception.
The other name which makes more sense to us is Candlemas. There in the Temple, as the elderly Simeon encounters the Child and His mother, the prophecy gives meaning to the Rite of Blessing of Candles. Jesus is the “Light that enlightens the pagans”. To be more polite, “Gentiles”. The encounter with Simeon was yet another theophany, a manifestation of God in human history. God cannot be a Saviour if He were only the Saviour of the Jews and not the Gentiles. It does not make sense.
However, we seemed to have fractured history, meaning that, we isolate or dismiss historical realities in such a way as to accommodate present sensibilities. For example, the calculation of time periods is now divided into BCE and CE, and they stand for, “Before Common Era” and “Common Era”. Such a division allows us to take our focus off how time came to be calculated. In the past, we used BC and AD to represent time before Christ and after. BC is easy enough to understand: Before Christ’s birth. However, A.D. stands for “Anno Domini”, that is, in the year of the Lord. Historically when was Christ born is not the point here. Rather, time is reckoned or sanctified by the birth of the pivotal person of Jesus Christ. BCE and CE, despite trying to get away from referring to Christ as the measure is a form of cutting Him down to size. The new time reference is trying to ignore the impact of Christ’s birth even if it is still using Him as the marker.
Thus, the Presentation is actually a kind of healing of time in the sense that in Christ we find the meeting of the Two Testaments. Here again, there is an attempt to separate both the Testaments in such a manner to accord them their autonomy, under the guise of respect for their uniqueness. Currently vogue is to use the terms, the Hebrew Testament and the Christian Testament to denote both the Old and the New Testaments. When Christ was brought to the Temple, a reconciliation took place. Such a healing may not be for the Jews but it is definitely for us. For the Jews it is OK for them to refer to the Hebrew Testament. For us, it is like calling the Real Presence a piece of wafer so that we may not offend those who do not believe in the Blessed Sacrament.
Going to Jerusalem, Jesus the New Temple of God enters the Old Temple to reconcile and fulfil the expectation of the old for the new. The Greeks called this encounter the “hypapante tou Kyriou” because both Simeon and Anna represented the Old Testament who have been waiting for the coming of salvation.
Indeed, creation has been groaning ever since the foundation of the world, longing for salvation. If we follow the 1st Reading, Christ now comes to Jerusalem to purify the city of its laxity and indifference. Thus, Simeon pointed out that He is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel. If we turn to the 2nd Reading, Christ is now the High Priest who offers the perfect sacrifice, that is, He offers Himself, and not merely any sacrificial offering. He is the only sacrifice that is acceptable to the Father. In that way, He ushers in the fullness of salvation in these last days.
If we reckon the Presentation as the last day of Christmas, the reconciliation between the Old and New Covenant cannot be more spectacular than the visit of the little Child to the Temple. He is the true Light that humanity has been waiting for, the Light that darkness cannot overcome. Christian is the mission that continues to shine the Light, who is Christ. The affairs of humanity and the state of the environment feel like Christianity is a losing proposition. Present situations actually highlight the reality of overwhelming darkness and this makes the list of our failures feel longer than our successes. Precisely the strength of darkness does not invalidate the mission to be Christ’s light.
At the start of the Mass, we all lit our candles, right? It was a reminder that the Presentation is a call of duty and devotion for each one of us to light up the world for Christ. We begin with our desire to be light even if we feel that we are nothing but little embers. As the hymn suggests. It only takes a spark to get a fire going.
