Saturday, 2 February 2013

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. Sermon by Br, Barry



Terce 2 Feb 2013 View Window
Foundation Day
Ordinary Time: February 2nd
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord





----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Br.  Barry  ...
Sent: Saturday, 2 February 2013, 8:31
Subject: Presentation

PRESENTATION 2013.

‘Forty days have passed since we celebrated the joyful feast of the Nativity of the Lord’. The Christmas Season has come and gone. The days after Epiphany were followed by the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Although part of Ordinary Time, the Baptism can be seen as the climax of the revelations of Christmastide because of its dramatic revelation of the Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.

The Presentation of Jesus by Mary and Joseph occurred decades before the Baptism. Does that mean that the Trinity has no place or, at best, only a place in the background of today’s feast ?

The Father is present for ‘ the Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord whose throne is in heaven ( psalm 10 ). The Son, the Logos, is there of course, an infant in his mother’s arms. What of the Holy Spirit ? As is to be expected in Luke’s gospel, the Spirit features prominently. But notice a strange thing. Mary, bride of the Spirit is there. Her Son, conceived by the Spirit is there. St. Joseph, spouse of Mary is there.
Yet it is Simeon whom the Evangelist associates with the Holy Spirit.

Simeon is prompted by the Spirit to go the Temple in the first place. Movement is a proper characteristic of the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Trinity, the Father is said to generate the Son but the Spirit ‘proceeds’ from the Father and the Son.

Saint Albert the Great, no less, has tried to say something about this procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, albeit in the strange language of the medieval scholastics: ‘the term’ procession’ indicates locomotion and voluntary motion. To proceed simply by such motion befits the Holy Spirit because love and spirit proceed voluntarily.’ You have to think about that one.

Against this should be set the wise words of St. Gregory Nazianzus, ‘What then is Procession ? You tell me what is the Unbegotteness of the Father and I will explain to you the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Spirit, and we shall both be frenzy- stricken for prying into the mystery of God’.
Simeon, then, moves through the Temple prompted by the One who is always associated with movement.

Next, still under the influence of the Spirit, he recognises the Saviour in Mary’s child. This is a perfect example of St. Irenaeus’ famous formula: ‘ just as there is no knowing the Father without the Son, so there is no knowing the Son without the Spirit’. Simeon then directs his talk to Mary. His attention is on Jesus, his talk with Mary, Simeon is a model of devotion.

He introduces a note of the Cross, ‘a sword shall pierce your own soul’: the Spirit has revealed to Simeon that all his marvellous privileges: his prophetic knowledge of the future, his setting eyes on the Saviour, his friendship with God have their source in the Cross.
Just why has the Evangelist linked the Holy Spirit with Simeon in these ways. It is clear that readers and listeners to this Gospel passage are meant to identify with Simeon. He is the most prominent character even if not the most important one. So for us too there is no knowing the Son without the Spirit, there is no friendship with God, nor any of the supernatural graces, without the Spirit.

The feast of the Presentation has also been the World Day of Consecrated Life since 1997. The Presentation is about a total offering of a life. In his Apostolic Exhortation on the Consecrated Life, Pope John Paul the Second wrote ‘ the consecrated person points to Christ loved above all things and to the mystery of the Trinity……. as the ultimate goal of every religious journey’.
That would make Simeon a model religious.



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