Gospel Reflections
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
2 February 2025, Church Year C
Giving Light
Luke 2:2-40
Rev.
Steven G.
Oetjen”
Reprinted by permission of "The Arlington Catholic
Herald"
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The
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord is also called
“Candlemas,” as its
celebration is often accompanied by the blessing of candles and
a procession of
the faithful with lighted candles.
And
the candle itself shows us something of the inner meaning of
this great feast
day: a connection between offering and light.
A candle only gives off light by giving up itself – a
kind of
“self-offering” of its wax, whereby it is being spent as it
gives light. Similarly,
Christ is declared a “light for
revelation to the Gentiles” precisely as he is being offered in
the temple.
A
little bit of background helps us understand what is going on in
the temple
when Mary and Joseph bring the child Jesus there. First of all, there is
the purification of
Mary. The Mosaic
Law prescribed that 40
days after a woman gave birth to a male child, she would offer a
purification
sacrifice of a lamb and a pigeon or turtledove, or two pigeons
or two
turtledoves for those who are poor (Lev 12:1-8). In the first line of
today’s Gospel passage,
Luke tells us that their days were completed for their
purification according
to the law of Moses,” meaning that it was now the fortieth day
after Jesus’
birth – hence, we celebrate this feast Feb 2.
And Mary makes the purification offering of the poor.
You
would think that if anyone should be exempt from the
purification ritual, it
would be the Immaculate Virgin.
But
exemptions or excuses are the farthest thing from Joseph and
Mary’s minds. They
are obedient to the law, and the Gospel
text stresses this repeatedly: “according to the law of Moses”
(v.22); “just as
it is written in the law of the Lord” (v.23); “in accordance with the
dictate in the law of
the Lord” (v.24); “to perform the custom of the law” (v.27). Their close observance
of God’s law is an
expression of their self-offering to God.
And
a second thing is going on simultaneously.
Besides the purification of the mother, there was also
the presentation
of the child. The
Mosaic Law commanded
that every male that opened the womb should be consecrated to
the Lord (Ex
13:2). The parents
had the option of
“redeeming” their firstborn, or “buying him back,” for a price
of five shekels,
Pope Benedict XVI, in his “Jesus of Nazareth” volume on the
infancy narratives,
pointed out that there is no mention at all in this Gospel text
of Mary and
Joseph doing that. Rather
than “buying
back” the child Jesus, they present him to the Father there in
the Temple. They do
not “redeem” him, for he is the
Redeemer, and he is totally consecrated to the Father.
The
presentation of the Lord in the Temple is an offering –- it
reveals Jesus’
total consecration to the Father, and thus his total abandonment
to the will of
the Father and to the mission entrusted to him.
This feast day already points us forward toward Easter,
when we will
celebrate the total sacrifice he made for us.
Already, this offering brings light.
And so, Simeon takes this child in his arms and
proclaims, “My eyes have
seen your salvation .
. . a light for
revelation to the Gentiles.”
And so, the
candle represents Christ. Offering
itself,
being spent, it gives light.
The
pattern is the same for us.
Consecrated
to God at our baptism, we are daily being transformed by
sanctifying grace to
make of ourselves an offering to God.
The more complete that offering, the more we allow the
light of Christ
to shine outward through us.
We
cannot overestimate the importance of radical holiness of life
and its effect
on the world around us. There
will
always be the temptation of laxity and lukewarmness. It is easy for us to
look at the darkness
around us and tell ourselves, at least I’m doing better than
most people.” But
the darker the world is, the more it
needs the radiant light of Christ.
This
is no time to be lax. It
is as time to
burn brightly, by the grace of God. And
that means, like a candle, our being spent.
It is precisely our self-offering, a radical consecration
to God, that
allows his light to shine brightly through us.