Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Today is the fortieth day since Christmas, and we remember on this day Mary’s first born son was given to the temple, as were all first born Jewish sons, then ransomed for the price of a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

Today’s responsorial psalm (Ps 24) opens the real meaning of this feast day.

Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
reach up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may come in!

There was no apparent need to widen the doors of the temple when Mary and Joseph quietly brought the Child in, but the temple should have trembled with the blare of trumpets and the rumbling of drums. Perhaps we should summon the vision of Isaiah who saw God sitting on his throne in the very same temple:

In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple.

Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" they cried one to the other. "All the earth is filled with his glory!"

At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke.

Not without reason is the Book of the Prophet Isaiah called the first gospel. More than any other Old Testament book, Isaiah explained to the early church the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

But today’s first reading from Malachi also illuminates the story of the presentation:

And suddenly there will come to the temple
the Lord whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.

Perhaps most of us have thought, “I wonder what I would have done had I met Jesus face to face. Would I have believed in him as his disciples did? Or would I have walked away?”

But there is none of that wistful thinking in the gospels. Jesus was astonishingly unspectacular. Both Saints Matthew and Luke describe his birth as very ordinary. The only unusual things that Mary and Joseph saw were the outlandish magi and the excited shepherds.

Several times the Evangelist Matthew says Jesus passed by the Sea of Galilee. “So what?” many will say. It takes an English major like me to notice the allusion to Elijah's vision on Mount Horeb. Without that literary clue you might see only Jesus taking a walk on the shore.

Although there are amazing stories in the gospels – Jesus walks on water, Jesus raises Lazarus, Jesus turns water to wine – even the greatest of them, his resurrection, lacks the spectacle of Hindu and animist stories.

The point is this: we see with the eyes of faith, and we’re dazzled most especially by the sacraments. When the priest says, “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world…” our hearts sing out with the old man Simeon, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”