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Presentation of the Lord (Feb 2)

February 02, 2025

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Blessing of Candles

Procession

Introit (Solemn Entrance)

Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
we humbly implore your majesty
that, just as your Only Begotten Son
was presented on this day in the Temple
in the substance of our flesh,
so, by your grace,
we may be presented to you with minds made pure.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Malachi 3:1-4

Thus says the Lord God: 1 “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight— indeed, he is coming,” says the Lord of hosts. 2 “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3 he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.”

Responsorial Psalm 24:7,8,9,10

R/. The Lord of hosts: he is king of glory!

Second Reading Hebrews 2:14-18

14 Since the children share flesh and blood, Jesus himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. 16 For it is clear that Jesus did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Gospel Acclamation

Gospel Luke 2:22-32

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. 23 As it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord,” 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 29 “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”

Catena Nova

Here we are standing in the Temple of God and holding the Son of God. We embrace him and so we pray to Almighty God, and to the Son of God who is in Jesus, that we be found worthy of being released from all earthly duties and so be found worthy of going to better things and places. We long to speak with Jesus and embrace him but we seek only to give him glory for ever and ever. All this is true because of God’s loving providence. He has chosen us from before all ages to be his own and to know his Son. (Origen of Alexandria)

Behold a just man, confined in the weary prison of his body, desiring to depart and to begin to be with Christ! For it is far better to depart and to be with Christ. Whoever desires to depart and be with Christ, let him come into the temple…. Let him take hold of the Word of God, let him embrace the Word of God with good works, as it were, with arms of faith. Then let him depart in peace, for he who has seen Life shall not see death. (St Ambrose of Milan)

Symeon the priest, when he took Him up in his arms to present Him before God, understood as he saw Him that he was not presenting Him, but was being himself presented. For the Son was not presented by the servant to His Father, but the servant was presented by the Son to his Lord. For it is not possible that He, by Whom every offering is presented, should be presented by another. So that He Who receives offerings gave Himself to be offered by another, that those who presented Him, while offering Him, might themselves be presented by Him. (St. Ephrem the Syrian)

Simeon saw the salvation prepared for all peoples, our salvation and that of Mary, the Virgin Mother. But we can join her too in empathic suffering with Christ, her Son and our brother, and in doing this we learn how to share feelings with others and so to reach out to them to share with them the comfort Christ alone gives. This doesn’t take away our suffering but gives it a new and transforming meaning…. in Christ, we find peace even in suffering and find the grace to place ourselves and our lives in our God’s hands. We know God reaches out to embrace and hold us even as Simeon was allowed to do for God incarnate. But don’t we embrace God incarnate when we receive another as Christ? Let us rejoice in knowing what a mighty work God can do through us by drawing us to see Christ in those we meet. (Timothy of Jerusalem)

We greatly need that One who will spiritually console Israel, the trusting hope of those who never cease to wrestle with all that separates them from God and God’s goodness….We want Jesus to come to us as to a temple of God and dwell in us always. I hope that you will hold to the way you have begun to practice and prepare the temple in your heart so that Jesus my come in. Open the arms of your heart to embrace Jesus and have them spiritually filled with Our Lord. Help one another do this, even as Blessed Mary and our Lord do. Then you never need to fear anything except ceasing your efforts to let the Lord’s image and likeness shine out from you in deeds of love. (St. Aelred of Rievaulx)

We must be burning with love and radiant with good deeds and so, take up Christ in our hands with Simeon … Could anyone hold up a lighted candle in his hands on this day, without at once remembering that old man, who on this same day, took up in his arms, Jesus, God’s Word, clothed in flesh like a candle-flame, clothed in wax and affirmed Him to be “the Light which would be a beacon for the Gentiles?" Be a lamp then in heart, in hand, in lips. The lamp in your heart will shine for you, the lamp in your hand or on your lips will shine out for your neighbours. The lamp in the heart, is loving faith, the lamp in the hand, is the example of good works, the lamp on the lips, is edifying speech. (Bl. Guerric of Igny)

A Song for Simeon

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation. (TS Eliot)

Homily

It seems like the Ghost of Christmas Past has made an appearance. The decorations have been down forever. Sales are over. Gifts tucked away in drawers. Children’s toys grown tiresome. Holiday pounds to be shed. Yet the Church isn’t quite ready to forget Christmas past. So we have a feast with an echo of Christmas about it: the Presentation of the Lord when Joseph and Mary brought the Child Jesus to the temple. How unexpected!

Indeed, everything about this feast is unexpected. Just imagine old Simeon there in the temple. The Holy Spirit revealed to him that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord (G). But who knows what Simeon was expecting? A powerful king with sword in hand to defeat the Roman invaders? Maybe. Or a glorious priest who would make the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem… please the Lord as in the days of old, as in years gone by? (cf. I). Possibly. Or a great prophet whose preaching would convict wrong-doers everywhere and pronounce God’s judgment on a sinful world? Perhaps.

These were common expectations of what the Messiah would be like: a great king a great priest, a great prophet. But then, the Lord whom Simeon sought, came suddenly to his temple in the form of a little child (cf. I). One among many who came that day to fulfill the law of the Lord. Practically lost in the crowd, unnoticed. And not merely a child, but the child of simple parents, who made the offering of the poor: a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. More than that, they came from an obscure place--the town of Nazareth in the region of Galilee--a place looked down upon by the religious elite of Jerusalem as a backwater contaminated by Gentiles (G). How unexpected!

But God is like that, you know. Always showing up where you’d least expect, where we might never think of looking unless we too, like Simeon, are in the Spirit (G). I’m sure you’ve heard of the work of Sister Helen Prejean with convicts on death row. The 85-year old Sister of St. Jospeh has been in the news again lately. For whereas the previous administration commuted the sentences of a number of death row inmates in federal custody to life in prison in an act of Christmastide mercy — something Sr. Helen personally implored the president to do — the current almost immediately issued an executive order to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”

Wherein lies the difference? Prejean tells how she came to recognize the image of God in people condemned to death for terrible crimes — the "worst of the worst," as she put it in her recent appeal. She has been able to see the presence of God in people refined like gold or like silver (I) by repentance and Sr. Helen’s unconditional love. For she, like Jesus, is not ashamed to call brothers and sisters (cf. Heb. 2:11) those whom others see fit only for judgment and condemnation. Or as Archbishop Roman Williams asks, “How difficult is it for us to see the face of God as victim in a criminal in prison?….the hopelessness and self-loathing, even the impotent anger of the jailed murderer, all that constitutes him or her a trapped and helpless victim, must speak to us, in however distorted an accent, of the Lamb of God.” How unexpected!

Simeon, however, sensed the Lamb of God who would go unrecognized as a criminal was in his arms. How this child was destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be contradicted. And how his mother too would share in the contradiction Christ would embody--a sword piercing her as well (cf. G). In other words, Simeon saw how it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Heb. 2:10). He saw how the Child would one day be a “dead man walking” himself --condemned to death by the stat e— to expiate the sins of the people (II). How unexpected!

But that’s how God comes among us: Not as a king like David to rule as one strong and mighty (RP) -- but as a king who bears a crown of thorns. Not as a mediator like Moses, to speak with God on our behalf atop a mountain shrouded by cloud and thunder--but as a merciful and faithful high priest…tested through what he suffered (II). Nor finally as a fearsome prophet like Elijah, whose coming we cannot endure, and before whom we cannot stand (cf. I) -- but as one like his brothers and sisters in every way (II). How unexpected!

And so God comes to us today. Not in the strong and powerful, but in the weak and the poor. Not in remote and distant places, but in the people next to you, members of the same body. And not in chariots of fire, or wearing special dress, nor even the mantle of authority, but in the simple gifts we present in this liturgy: Our own version of turtledoves and pigeons: namely, gifts of bread and wine. These are the offerings that please the Lord (I). How unexpected!

And even more unexpectedly, we receive these gifts as his body and blood since the children share in blood and flesh (II). Through Jesus Christ, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for [God’s] people Israel (cf. G). Who lives and reigns, with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that the Light of Christ may shine through our lives and reveal God to all who are searching for meaning or purpose to their lives.

For the Light of Wisdom for all church leaders: that their teaching and actions may lead others to a deeper relationship with Christ and bind the Church in greater unity.

For all who live in darkness: that the Light of the Gospel may open new insights for them and show them the path to life that Christ offers.

For the Light of Justice: that the burden and pain of those who suffer unjustly may be lifted and that God’s saving mercy may free them to live life fully.

For all members of Religious Communities: that the Spirit will renew them and empower them to give faithful witness to Christ who is the center of their lives.

For parents of infants: that God will guide them in caring for and nurturing their child so that each child may grow to their fullest potential and be a blessing for the human family.

For all senior citizens: that God will give them health and strength so that we may learn from them and be inspired by them.

For Light for all world leaders: that God will help all world leaders to see the value and dignity of human life and work tirelessly for peace.

For the preservation of natural resources: that God will guide us understanding the rhythms of nature and inspire us as we work to preserve the riches of the earth for future generations.

For all who are recovering from natural disasters: that God will give them strength, renew their hope, and help them to find the resources that they need to rebuild their lives.

Inspired by your Spirit, Lord,
we gather in your temple to welcome your Son.
Enlighten our minds
and lay bare our inmost thoughts.
Purify your people, and make us obedient to the demands of your law,
so that we may mature in wisdom
and grow to full stature in your grace.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)

Offertory Hymn

Communion Antiphon

My eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all the people.

Closing Hymn

Ave, Mary, full of grace, In whose virgin arms; embrace God to God himself doth vow. Alleluia, alleluia! Let me in the temple wait, Jesu, for mine all art thou.

God is to his temple come; Angels throng the hallowed dome. What beyond hath heav’n in store? Alleluia, alleluia! God himself our flesh doth wear; This than heav’n itself is more!

Incense gales of gladness rise Where this morning sacrifice ‘Mid reechoing shouts is made; Alleluia, alleluia!

Evening’s rite in tears shall end, On the darkening Cross displayed. There behold the Oblations wrought By whose precious ransom bought, We are all to God made nigh: Alleluia, alleluia!

Now no longer, Lord, our own, Thine we live and thine we die. Let thy servant now depart; May we see thee as thou art; Nought of earth arrest our eyes! Alleluia, alleluia! Let us here with Jesus grow, And in him hereafter rise.

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