Thursday 2 February the Church’s liturgy celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Following the Mosaic Law which determined that 40 days after the birth of their first-born child parents are to go to the Temple of Jerusalem to offer the infant to the Lord and for the ritual purification of the mother (see Exod 13, 1-2, 11-16; Lev 12, 1-8), Mary and Joseph faithfully observed this law by offering a couple of turtle doves or pigeons in the Temple.
By contemplating this liturgical feast one can easily detect the direct correlation between the sacrifice of the Son of God, as represented in his presentation in the Temple, and the total consecration of every man and woman to the Lord. For this matter, as from 1997, Blessed John Paul II directed that a special Day of Consecrated Life is to be celebrated in universal Church annually. As he rightly stated in his first message for the World Day for Consecrated life there is a threefold aim which upholds and promotes such a celebration.
“In the first place, it answers the intimate need to praise the Lord more solemnly and to thank him for the great gift of consecrated life, which enriches and gladdens the Christian community by the multiplicity of its charisms and by the edifying fruits of so many lives totally given to the cause of the Kingdom… In the second place, this day is intended to promote a knowledge of and esteem for the consecrated life by the entire People of God… The third reason regards consecrated persons directly. They are invited to celebrate together solemnly the marvels which the Lord has accomplished in them, to discover by a more illumined faith the rays of divine beauty spread by the Spirit in their way of life, and to acquire a more vivid consciousness of their irreplaceable mission in the Church and in the world.”
The kernel of this feast lies hidden within the prophecy of Simeon to Mary: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2, 34-35). Simeon presents Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2, 32) and prophetically announces the ultimate offering of Jesus to the Father and his definite victory (see Luke 2, 32-35) at the cost of his passion, death and resurrection. However, Jesus’ fate comprises that of his mother as well. Spiritually, she too had to undergo the mocking, the spitting, the scourging, and the killing her Son had to endure to save us. Yet, her faithful response in accompanying her Son Jesus till the end earned for her the crown of glory with him!
Similarly, as Pope Benedict XVI said in 2007, “when one renounces everything to follow Christ, when one gives to him all that one holds most dear, braving every sacrifice as did the divine Teacher, the consecrated person who follows in Christ’s footsteps necessarily also becomes ‘a sign of contradiction’, because his/her way of thinking and living is often in opposition to the logic of the world, as it is almost always presented in the media. Indeed, in choosing Christ we let ourselves be ‘conquered’ by him without reserve. How many people thirsting for the truth are struck by this courage and attracted by those who do not hesitate to give their life, their own life, for their belief.”
Are we, as consecrated persons, ready to let the Lord fashion us into signs of contradiction?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap