Bishop Nicholas Hudson delivered this homily at Blessed Sacrament Church, Copenhagen Street on the 2nd February 2020, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.
Have you still got your crib up at home? I have. It’s a custom I learnt from abroad. I know, in England, we tend to take all the Christmas decorations down after the New Year; or, if not at the actual New Year, around 12th night, the Epiphany. But, in countries like France, Italy, Germany, they keep the decorations up, especially the cribs, until today. Today: the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. Because it’s this day that really marks the end of Christmas. It was on this day in Jewish tradition, 40 days after the birth of their child, that Jewish parents would come and present their child to God. It was a thank-you and a prayer offering: offering their child to God in thanksgiving for the gift of new life and asking God to help their child lead a good and holy life.
The way it’s described here in the Gospel is deeply touching. Because it’s not to just any temple that Joseph and Mary bring the 40-day-old Jesus. It’s to the temple in Jerusalem; the same temple where he will teach for all the years of his ministry. ‘Day after day I sat teaching in the temple’, do you remember him saying? The same temple wherein he will provoke his arrest when he loses patience and expels the money-changers. Of course, the temple wasn’t only a place of prayer and of teaching but also of sacrifice. A great many creatures were sacrificed there every year. Joseph and Mary are required by law to bring two turtle-doves to sacrifice as a prayer to express the offering of their child to God. Seeing Jesus entering this place of sacrifice reminds us he is destined to make the supreme sacrifice at the end of his life. It’s why he came into the world. It’s why we can say the Feast of the Presentation really explains Christmas; because he came into the world to be the sacrifice which takes away our sins.
Simeon says as much as soon as he sees Jesus. He recognises the child for who he is. At first, he rejoices, saying words which have been handed down the centuries so as to be quite familiar to us: ‘At last, all-powerful Master, you give leave to your servant to go in peace. For mine eyes have seen your salvation.’ Simeon is telling God, in other words, ‘Now I can die in peace – because I have seen the one who will save Israel.’ But then Simeon adds something very sad. He warns Mary and Joseph, ‘This child is destined to be rejected.’ And, turning to Mary, he utters words which are truly chilling in their accuracy; he tells Mary, ‘A sword will pierce your own soul too.’
Poor Mary, still so young; she may have been as young as 17; so beautiful; so lovely; and so in love with her little boy, being told his destiny will be rejection; and given that mysterious warning that a sword would piece her soul too? She must have wondered what on earth it all must mean. She knows, 33 years later; she knows then what it means, as she sits at the foot of Calvary and holds in her arms the limp, lifeless body of her crucified Son.
We’ve all seen pictures, some of us are lucky enough to have seen it with our own eyes, of that amazing statue by Michelangelo in Rome of the Pieta; Mary holding in her arms the body of her 33-year-old Son, his hands and feet and side all pierced. Now she knows what Simeon meant as she feels such grief, what must surely have been an extraordinary grief, pierce her soul to the core. But what strikes me, every time I see that image, is how serene Mary remains. Her face is deeply pained but serene; as if to say, ‘I know. This pain shatters my heart but I know it was to do this that I brought him into this world, to suffer with all who suffer.’
It’s the same message as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews wishes us to take from this Feast in that powerful 2nd reading, that Christ came to suffer with us, to suffer to the very depths of our being. So it is that he says, ‘It was not the angels that Jesus took to himself. He took to himself descent from Abraham.’ In other words, Jesus didn’t become an angel.
That would have been easy. Because angels don’t have to die. But no: he took descent from Abraham; he became a human being so that he could not only suffer with us, suffer temptation too, as all human beings do, and pain but even death.
The serenity in Mary’s face is the serenity of one who understands all of this; and remembers what he promised: that he said he would rise again. ‘Destroy this temple,’ did he not say, ‘and in three days I will raise it up’? And as St John explains to us, the temple he was talking about was not the temple made of stones but his body. When others find it hard to believe, Mary trusts and reassures them; reassures them that he will make sense of it all. That was why he came into the world, to reassure us that all will be well in the end.
To go back to where we began. Whether you have a crib still up or not is not what matters. What matters is that, on this Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the temple, we take one more look at the Christmas event. Allow him to present himself to us. I’d like to suggest we do so with the help of one more image. This time an image of the grown-up Christ. It’s an image we can see for ourselves in St Paul’s Cathedral. But whether we’ve seen it or will never see it there, we can each imagine it. Because it’s simple and vivid.
It’s a painting called, ‘The Light of the World’. We were reminded on Christmas morning that he is Light from Light; a light that enlightens all men; ‘a light to enlighten the Gentiles’, Simeon calls him. So Jesus stands bearing light, a lantern. He stands at a door on which he knocks. The first thing you notice about this door is that it’s covered in ivy. The second thing, and it hits you when you see it, is that the door has no handle. You realise in an instant: this is the door of my heart because Jesus waits for me to open the door of my heart to him. Of course, he’s so gentle: he would never force himself upon us; he waits to be invited in.
Today is the day to invite him into my heart. That’s the real meaning of the Presentation: that the Lord waits to present himself, waits to enter into the temple of my heart. What better way to celebrate the end of Christmas, the real end of Christmas, than by taking a little time today to be still with that thought. Imagine that picture, the Light of the World. Imagine Jesus knocking at the door of the heart. And imagine what you would like to say him.