“A Saving Encounter” 

BIBLE READINGS:
Malachi 3:1-4 // Heb 2:14-18 // Lk 2:22-40 

I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

This year’s February issue of Reader’s Digest features the story of Norma Super and her daughter, Dani, who became lost while hiking through the mountains straddling the Wyoming-Colorado border.  The possibility of saving the mother and daughter was bleak, for no one lost for more than five days in that wilderness had ever been found alive. The seventh day was dawning when Aleta Walker and her friend Diane Holycross set out to find them somewhere in the Zirkel Wilderness, moved by a strange gut feeling that mother and daughter might still be alive. The author, Peter Michelmore, described the saving encounter between the rescuers and the lost campers: “Norma splashed her face with icy creek water. Black spots fluttered in front of her eyes. She shook off the dizziness and trudged on to a meadow sprinkled with blue and pink flowers. ‘There’s something white there,’ said Dani, pointing ahead. They hiked on, watching. ‘It looks like a horse.’ They walked closer. Norma could make out two horses now. Two people on horseback. She broke into a run, pushed by adrenaline through the bog as mud sucked at her boots. One hundred feet from the riders, she saw that they were women. ‘Are you Norma Super?’ one called. Norma collapsed. On her knees and weeping, she said, ‘Yes’.”

The evangelist Luke, likewise, depicts in the gospel story a saving encounter in the temple of Jerusalem: the meeting between Jesus and the two figures of messianic expectation, Simeon and Anna. This redemptive event was commemorated by the Church in a celebration known as the “feast of the Encounter”. Now called the “feast of the Presentation of the Lord”, this Christological feast is a prolongation of the Christmas mystery.  Celebrated forty days after the birth of Jesus, it presents his “epiphany” or “manifestation” in the temple as the Messiah and Savior. Moved by the Holy Spirit, Simeon recognized in Jesus the Messiah promised long ago. The prophetess Anna, advanced in years and dedicated to the worship of the Lord in the temple, testified to the people about the arrival of redemption in the person of Jesus. The child brought to the temple for consecration in obedience to the Mosaic prescription (cf. Ex 13:15) is the “light of revelation to the Gentiles” and the “glory for the people of Israel”. Indeed, in God’s salvific plan, the light of salvation must shine on all the peoples of the world.

The beautiful ceremony of the lighting and blessing of candles at the beginning of the Mass of the feast of the Lord’s presentation underlines the joy and life-giving encounter with Christ as the “light of the nations”. This liturgical ritual has a paschal connotation. According to the authors of the book, Days of the Lord, the Liturgical Year: “The acclamation of Christ as Light is a prelude to that which will flow unrestrained in the liturgy of the Easter vigil. The Encounter with God coming among us, in his Son made human, has its prolongation and fulfillment in the encounter that the Risen Christ is preparing for us at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, in a pasch like his.”

The Gospel pericope is to be seen in the context of the Malachi prophecy that “there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek”. The prophecy of hope is seen by the evangelist Luke as fulfilled in the coming of the child Jesus in the temple. According to Malachi, the one who is to come in the temple will “purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord”. As a minister of God’s judgment, the messianic Lord who comes into the temple of our lives is like the fuller who treads and beats the cloth to soften it. Indeed, by our own efforts it would be impossible to purify our own selves. The Lord himself will bring about our cleansing. His merciful act of purification is in view of creating a people who will offer a pleasing sacrifice and liturgy to the Lord.

The sacrificial and cultic role of the Messiah, yearned for by the people in need of redemption, is underlined in the letter to the Hebrews. Christ’s complete identification with us as a suffering Messiah and High Priest is presented to us by the author of the letter to the Hebrews: “He had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.” At the presentation of the Lord Jesus in the temple, his priestly ministry has begun but attains full realization through the sacrifice of the cross. According to Adrian Nocent, “the cost of the cross was shared by the mother, whose soul – according to Simeon’s words – was to be pierced by a sword, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare.”

The feast of the presentation of the Lord in the temple is also a Marian feast. It celebrates a saving event centered on Christ in which Mary played a vital role of collaboration in the divine plan. In total obedience to the will of God, Mary brought her first-born son into the temple that he may be consecrated to the Lord. The emphasis of the feast is not on Mary’s ritual purification; but rather, on the consecration of the Lord Jesus to the messianic plan as the Savior and “light of all the nations”. 

II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART 

Prepared by: Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang, PDDM