The Presentation of the Lord

They will offer due sacrifice to the Lord, said the prophet Malachi in the first reading. Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, said St Luke in the Gospel for today. And when the parents of Jesus make their offering and present him to the Lord, Simeon sees the salvation which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles.

This is St Luke”s way of saying that in some way, all humanity is contained within this tiny being. All the efforts, all the sufferings, all the joys of Christ’s body, the Church, are already present in principle in the Child who is presented in the Temple on this day. And Mary who is Mother of the Church, offers to the Father all the children who will be hers, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. All our thoughts, then, and all our actions, should be the kind that Mary can present to the Lord.

If we are to become an offering welcomed by the Lord from the hands of Mary, then we will need solitude of heart. Our heart is a temple greater than the one at Jerusalem. We must be alone in this temple, with only God with us, and with Mary to present us. There should be a great silence there, like the outdoors when snow covers the ground. If we’re thinking critical thoughts about situations or other people, then the temple of our heart is a noisy place, and the offering of all we do cannot have its full effect.

We should be free from all anxiety even in regard to ourselves. Certainly we should be sorry for our sins and do all we can to grow better every day, but the thought of our imperfections should never become a preoccupation. It’s God we should be thinking about, more than ourselves. The best way to prepare ourselves to be offered in the temple by Mary is to concentrate on fulfilling God’s will.

In many ways, this feast of the presentation is a kind of icon of the spiritual life, which is why it is the World Day for Consecrated Life in most countries. The spiritual life consists precisely in allowing ourselves to be offered up by the hands of Mary, so that we can be presented to the eternal Father. She had no need for purification according to the law, but we do need it, all of us, if we are to receive Jesus, the Light of the Father. When Mary went to the Temple, it was not for her own sake, but for ours, in our name, for the purification of all humanity, so that we in turn might receive Jesus.

This, finally, is the offering that will please the Lord, when Mary presents us to the Father. He gazes unceasingly at us, as Jesus looks into the eyes of Mary in the lovely statue at the monks’ entrance to the church. I think of Jesus as seeing each one of us in the eyes of Mary. When the eyes of faith can meet his gaze, all that we do is lit up; everything becomes clearer and more transparent. We realize the brightness and the beauty of a life which is genuinely consecrated to God.

When we look back at him with the eyes of faith, it is the Face of Love that we see, and we are no longer afraid. We look at Jesus present in the Host we are to receive, and we see with the eyes of faith that his gaze and ours meet, and merge in an eternal communion.