Today we celebrate
a great feast of the Church that speaks directly to the spiritual challenges
that we all face on a daily basis. For
today we celebrate the Presentation of Christ, forty days after His birth, in
the Temple in Jerusalem. The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young
Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a
poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this
Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and
the glory of Thy people Israel.” The aged prophetess St. Anna also
recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Our epistle reading from Hebrews reminds us that the One brought into the Temple
this day is the Great High Priest Who offers Himself on the Cross and destroys
the power of sin and death through His glorious resurrection. Christ does so in order that we may enter
into the Heavenly Temple and participate by grace in the eternal communion of
the Holy Trinity. The priesthood and
sacrifices of the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ’s fulfillment of them. The Savior’s
offering and priesthood are eternal, for He intercedes for us at the right hand
of the Father. There is no question, then, that the Christian life is not
about achieving any earthly goal on its own terms but about entering into the blessedness
of the Heavenly Kingdom, both as a present reality and a future hope.
Every day of our lives, in all that we think, say, and do, we have the
opportunity to join ourselves more fully to Christ as the Great High Priest. He will bless and heal every dimension of who
we are in this world as we offer ourselves to Him in holiness. He offered Himself fully, without reservation
of any kind, and the only limits to His restoration of our souls, even in the
world as we know it, are those that we stubbornly insist upon maintaining. Christ calls us to present ourselves to Him
fully, without reservation of any kind, as we enter into the Heavenly Temple
through communion with Him. All that we
must leave behind is what cannot be blessed for our salvation, what cannot be
united to the Savior in holiness. In
other words, all that we must leave behind are our sins.
We have surely all
accepted lies of one kind or another about who we really are. It is so easy to define ourselves by our
disordered desires, by sins we fall into time and time again, or by worldly
categories that simply inflame our passions and serve only earthly kingdoms of
one kind or another. It is so tempting
to think that whatever wins the praise of others, gratifies some desire, or does
not call us into question must somehow be right. Instead of trying to make a false god in our
own image, Christ calls us to embrace the hard truth that we will become more
truly ourselves by becoming more like Him.
He offered up Himself to the point of death on the Cross in order to
conquer the power of death, the wages of sin.
The more we offer ourselves to Him by dying to the power of sin in our
lives through ongoing repentance, the more we will become our true selves in His
image and likeness.
We must not limit our celebration of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple merely
to remembrance of an event long ago, for we commemorate the feasts of the
Church by entering into the eternal reality we celebrate in them. We cannot truly celebrate this feast without
uniting ourselves more fully to the Lamb of God Who is also our Great High
Priest. Our celebration must extend
beyond this service to how we live each day, especially in offering ourselves
more fully to Him for greater participation even now in the life of the Kingdom
of heaven. As with just about anything
else, doing so is a process, a journey of reorienting our lives to God that
does not find completion in an instant.
The Theotokos prepared to become the
Living Temple of the Lord in a unique way by literally growing up in the Temple
in Jerusalem. By devoting herself to
prayer and purity for years, she gained the spiritual clarity to say “Behold
the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” in response
to the shocking message of the Archangel Gabriel that she was to become the
Virgin Mother of the Savior. Saint
Joseph initially did not want to accept the inconvenient calling to become the
guardian of the teenage Mary, but his many decades of faithfulness gave him the
strength to accept this unusual vocation in old age, and even to risk his life
in leading the family as refugees to Egypt in order to escape the murderous
plot of Herod.
When the Theotokos and Saint Joseph
brought the infant Jesus to the temple forty days after His birth, Saint Simeon
recognized Christ and proclaimed “Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in
peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou
hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the
Gentiles, and for glory to Thy people Israel.”
Simeon was an old and righteous man, and the Holy Spirit had revealed to
him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. He certainly had not acquired the spiritual
strength to do so by accident, but through a long life of faith and
faithfulness. The same is true of the
elderly prophetess Anna, a widow in her eighties who “did not depart from the
temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.”
Those who brought the young Savior
to the Temple in obedience to the Old Testament law and those who recognized
Him there were all people who had offered their lives to God time and time
again. They were of different sexes,
ages, and backgrounds, which shows that it is not the outward circumstances of
our lives that determines where we stand before the Lord. All may enter into the Heavenly Temple
through Our Great High Priest, for in Him such differences become spiritually
unimportant. What is crucial is that we
open ourselves to become more fully who we are in Him as those who bear the
divine image and likeness.
The struggle to do so is never
ending. Surely, the journeys of the
Theotokos and Saints Joseph, Simeon, and Anna did not go as any of them had
expected. They all faced challenges and
sorrows. As Simeon said to the
Theotokos, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also,” for she would see
her Son rejected and crucified. Of course,
the particulars of our challenges are different from those of these great
saints, but we must use them in the same way.
Namely, we must embrace them as opportunities to offer even the weakest
and most painful dimensions of our lives to Christ for healing and
transformation. That does not mean that
all our problems will go away or that we will always feel as though we are
making progress, but that they present the greatest opportunities we have for entering
more fully into the Heavenly Temple through our Great High Priest.
When we unite
ourselves to Him as best we can as we struggle against temptation and wrestle
with our passions, we will come to know both our own weakness and His gracious
strength more fully. By doing so, we
will gain the spiritual clarity to reject superficial distortions of Christianity
focused on emotion, worldly success of any kind, or the condemnation and hatred
of any person or group. Since He is “a
light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Thy people Israel,” His salvation
not limited in any way by the idolatrous divisions that we find so appealing in
defining ourselves over against neighbors who are living icons of God. Our
Savior has triumphed through His Cross and empty tomb due to His unfathomable
love for all who bear the divine image and likeness. Every time that we offer
ourselves to Him in obedience, we enter more fully into His great victory over
sin and death. Let us celebrate His
presentation today by using all our struggles for our salvation as we unite
ourselves in holiness to our Great High Priest.
