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| 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
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.
______________________________________________
02 Feb 2011
Presentation Feb 2nd - Nunraw anniversary 1946. Candlemass, the Solemnity of the Presentation of the Lord. The Rite of the Blessing of the Candles was celebrated in the early morning Cloister, We carried the lighted ...
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