Presentation to the LORD

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, a relatively ancient celebration. In some places it’s called Candlemas Day. If I wasn’t snowbound, I like to think I’d being going to Mass to celebrate this day. As it is, I said my rosary and I’m having a quiet presentation of my own here at home with my husband and cat.
Reading up about this tradition, I learned that,

‘According to Jewish law, the firstborn male child belonged to God, and the parents had to "buy him back" on the 40th day after his birth, by offering a sacrifice of "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons" (Luke 2:24) in the temple (thus the "presentation" of the child). On that same day, the mother would be ritually purified (thus the "purification").

Meditating on these customs of long ago, I thought about their applicability to my relationship with God today.

It’s been 40 days since Our Lord came to us on that glorious Christmas Day. We awaited Him with such joy and anticipation. Then He quietly stole into our world in the most unexpected and out-of-the-way place He could find, yet still fulfilling all that His prophets had foretold about Him. He came as a vulnerable infant, who could have been refused by His mother, denied by His foster father and slaughtered by His ruling monarch. Instead, His birth was sung by a whole Host of Heavenly Angels, witnessed by God’s chosen few and honored by a celestial event. But really that was 2000 years ago, even if we do relive the event every year when we celebrate December 25th or every time we pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.

The Mystery of Christmas is all about the celebration of His Coming into this world. But what is the Mystery of the Presentation?

Is it Mary’s purification and mine? Do I join her in praying the beautiful words from the Magnificat, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior because he has regarded the humility of his handmaid.” Unlike Mary, I only pray the next words as they apply to her. And yes, dear Mother of Our Lord and mine, all generations do call you blessed because He that is mighty, has done great things to you.

Yes, that is part of the Mystery of the Presentation. But there is more. There is also Our Lord’s Presentation. There are the beautiful meetings between the Holy Family and the two people, Anna and Simeon, in the Temple, their joy in beholding Jesus and our joy that at least they understand His significance even if all the rest are ignorant.

Jesus has come to earth, a gift to us from the Father and at the Temple He is offered back to the Father in accordance with Jewish Law, in recognition of the fact that He belongs to God. So Mary and Joseph offer two simple turtledoves in payment for you dearest Jesus. I like to think that they themselves are the little turtledoves and Our Heavenly Father was very pleased with their humble offering. He knew His dearly beloved son would be safe with such parents, young as they were, for they had such pure hearts.

And me? Am I only a spectator of all this? Do the mysteries of the Rosary and Our Faith merely offer us lifeless cold images to look at and speculate about? Or do they invite us into the story as a participant in the wonder and beauty of Christ’s relationship with His Church, the Father’s bond with the Son and depth of love in the Holy Trinity?

I believe we are always invited into the mysteries in a personal way.

I have now come to the Temple as well. I come to present all I have. It isn’t much. It is only ... me. If I should be transformed into something which could fly—and Mary and Joseph are turtle doves—I think I would be a flea or a gnat. But whatever I am, here I am Lord. Please purify me, redeem me and accept this, my presentation, on Your Feast Day. Thank you Jesus for the gift of your life and the glimpse into this scene. Please allow me to go deeper into the Gospel mysteries each time I pray.

Day 12 - Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord

‘On the next day, when the great crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, (even) the king of Israel.” Jesus found an ass and sat upon it, as is written: “Fear no more, O daughter Zion; see, your king comes, seated upon an ass's colt.” His disciples did not understand this at first, but when Jesus had been glorified they remembered that these things were written about him and that they had done this for him.’ John 12:12-17

This is one of those beautiful chapters which makes Reverend Mill’s book worth its price even if it’s the only chapter you read. It is a ‘taking apart’ if you will of the familiar Palm Sunday and Passover stories which we think we know but maybe we could stand to examine in a lot more detail, if for no other reason than during Holy Week there is so much going on, it’s hard to take everything in.

Although there’s no way to do justice to this chapter and I’d have to plagiarize half the text in any attempt to do so, I thought I’d keep my ambitions for this post extremely small and just focus on the chapter title, which also happens to be the most important line in that Scripture reading: ‘Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord.’

I want to be blessed, don’t you?

Mostly I believe I am blessed. Whenever I see my eighty + year old friend Lloyd and ask him how he is, he answers, “I’m blessed!” I love his Faith. It’s a reminder to me that I’m blessed too.

But what about the rest of the sentence, ‘. . . is he who comes in the name of the Lord’?

When do I come, ‘in the name of the Lord’? Whenever I make the Sign of the Cross*, I say, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Isn’t that the name of the Blessed Trinity? Isn’t that my God? If I begin every journey with the Sign of the Cross then am I not going – and coming – in the name of the Lord? And by extension am I also not blessed?

“In the Name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Blessed Trinity, help me to remember to begin all my endeavors—however small—in Your Holy Name that I may be blessed in all I say, think and do by Your Grace. Amen.”



* When I make the Sign of the Cross I hold my hand as shown in the picture above. I learned about this Byzantine Catholic or Eastern Christian tradition when I was teaching my own children about the Sign of the Cross many years ago. The position of the fingers gives additional meaning to the physical signing action and I liked that. As a teacher I had learned that the more sensory involvement in any activity the greater the overall learning potential and individual participation. The Byzantine view is explained in more detail here.