“The old man carried the child, and the child supported the old man”: this is how the Liturgy of the Hours sings, in one of its antiphons, the mystery of the encounter in the temple between Jesus and the old man Simeon. Augustine comments: “So that old man welcomed into his hands the Word of God, who had become a child […] that child, so fragile both in the mother’s womb and in the hands of the old man, had come to give us solidity, being the author of all things. And in the Sermones the paradox continues: “He saw him as a child, but he recognized him as great […] he took him, already on the point of being taken by him; he supported the Christ man and was supported by Christ God”. Let us try to enter into the grace of this episode of Jesus’ childhood, narrated to us by Luke (cf. 2:22-38), and of the feast that celebrates it, the “Presentation of the Lord”. This celebration, as is known, is of Eastern origin and belongs to the series of events that manifest the Lord as Messiah. It is called “Hypapánte, feast of the Encounter”: by the “ineffable condescension of God”, the Child Jesus is brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph, in observance of the legal obligation of purification for the mother and redemption for the firstborn. Here the encounter between the “elder” Simeon and the “Word made child” takes place. The Byzantine liturgy, blending poetry and theology in texts of rare beauty, celebrates the feast in a solemn way, with a day of vigil (Proeórtia) and seven days of after-feast (Metheórtia); February 3 presents the memory of the saints Simeon and Anna. From the East it then passed to Rome, where the emphasis was placed on the purification of the Mother, also taking on a penitential character over the centuries. Today the celebration has completely freed itself from the penitential nuance and has regained its Christological centrality. The blessing of the candles and the exhortation that precedes the procession (already present in the East) leave no doubt about the desire to consider it as a journey towards the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist, a sign in turn of the definitive eschatological encounter. Since 1997 the “Presentation of the Lord”, by the will of John Paul II, has been enriched with a new meaning icato: remembering the gesture of Mary and Joseph, which prophetically anticipates the offering of Jesus to the Father for the salvation of the world, the Day of Consecrated Life is celebrated every year on this date. To religious, John Paul II emphasized at the time, “is entrusted the task of proclaiming with words and example the primacy of the Absolute over every human reality”, in a world that “often seems to have lost the authentic sense of God”.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey