Presentation of Child Jesus in the Temple - SolemnityAnniversary of the Foundation of Sancta Maria Abbey - Nunraw Community Sermon - Fr. Raymond | |||
From: Raymond . . .
Sent: Friday, 3 February 2012, 9:29
Subject: Presentation 2012
Sent: Friday, 3 February 2012, 9:29
Subject: Presentation 2012
No matter how far one travels back in time one finds everywhere and always the evidence of mankind’s instinctive need to offer sacrifice to the Divine. Man has an innate need to take some living creature to represent his own life and kill and consume it in fire as a symbol of the gift of himself to his God. The Jewish feast of the Presentation was nothing but the con-tinuance of this fundamental religious trait in the lives of God’s chosen people
For us who live in the fullness of God’s time, in the Christian Era, however, there is an added dimension to this feast. The Victim offered on our behalf is That First Born, the First Born who is merely foreshadowed by all the previous victims. He is The Christ himself, the only begotten of the Father. And the offering of this First Born is not to be merely symbolised by the slaying of a lamb or a dove. Our offering is himself, in all the fullness of tragic reality, the very victim who is sacrificed; and in this, since he is himself one of us, he represents the complete and perfect offering to his Heavenly Father of each and every one of us.
This whole episode in the temple is also shot through with beautiful symbolism. We must ask ourselves why, for instance were there two prophets, Simeon and Anna, and not just one? Would either one not have done? And why was one male and one female? And why were they old and not young? By their duality of gender, man and woman, Simeon and Anna surely represent the whole of the human race welcoming its Saviour. They are a reflection of the original couple, Adam and Eve; the founders of our race; the male and female to whom the promise of this child was originally made so many centuries before in the Garden of Eden. And by their old age this couple surely represents the fullness of the coming of age of God’s chosen people. God’s designs are always fulfilled and never frustrated. No matter how many of us are unfaithful, there will always be a faithful remnant. The acknowledgement by Simeon and Anna that the Messiah has come at last is the living proof that God’s call and choice of the Jews was fulfilled, at least in these two. Here we can call to mind that also the beginning of the new Messianic era is likewise represented by man and woman, male and female, Joseph and Mary, of course.
Finally we may consider that, Simeon and Anna represent by their holiness the ultimate success and triumph of the work of Redemption; the work that was to be accomplished by this child; the Child in whom, not only they, but all of us were chosen from the beginning to live holy and upright lives awaiting the fullness of our redemption.
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