Vigils Reading – Presentation of the Lord

February 2

THE PASCHAL SIGNIFICANCE

OF JESUS’ PRESENTATION

From “Sign of Contradiction” by St John Paul II6

◊◊◊

Forty days after the nativity the Church celebrates an event full of

spiritual significance. On that day the Son of God, as a tiny child of poor parents,

born in a rough stable in Bethlehem, was carried to the temple in Jerusalem.

This was his own temple, the temple of the living God, but he came to it not as

the Lord but as one under the law. For the poor the law prescribed that forty

days after the birth of the firstborn two turtle-doves or two young pigeons must

be offered in sacrifice, as a sign that the child was consecrated to the Lord.

The message which the Spirit of God allowed the old man Simeon to sense

and express so wonderfully was implicitly in the event itself, in this first

encounter between the Messiah and his temple. On seeing the child, Simeon

begins to utter words that are not of human provenance. He prophesies,

prompted by the Holy Spirit; he speaks with the voice of God, the God for whom

the temple was built and who is its rightful master.

Simeon’s words begin, in what the liturgy calls the Song, by bearing

witness to the light… They end…by bearing witness to the cross, in which

contradiction of Jesus, the Christ, is to find tangible expression. 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.

Chronologically the presentation of Jesus in the temple is linked with the

nativity, but in its significance it belongs with the mystery of the pasch. It is the

first of the events which clearly reveal the messianic status of the newborn child.

With him are linked the fall and the rising of many in the old Israel and also the

new. On him the future of humankind depends. It is he who is the true Lord of

the ages to come. His reign begins when the temple sacrifice is offered in

accordance with the law, and it attains full realization through the sacrifice on

the cross, offered in accordance with an eternal plan of love.

6 pp. 40-41; reprinted in Meditations on the Sunday Gospels: Year A; introduced and edited by John E. Rotelle, Hyde Park,

NY: New City Press, 1995, pp. 144-145.13