The Feast of the Presentation 2011.
…This Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple can teach us so much about Jesus, about His Mother and His foster Father, and about the consecrated life, which the Church also we celebrates today.
Today, Jesus is presented to us as the one who fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament, particularly Malachi’s message that “suddenly there will come to the Temple the Lord whom you seek,” and that He will be the “messenger of the covenant.”
In the Gospel we are introduced to two elderly people who were in the Temple at the time. The first of these was a devout man called Simeon.  He had been told that he would not die until he had first laid eyes on the promised Messiah. Guided by the Spirit he came into the Temple and recognized in Mary’s child the long-awaited Messiah.  He makes a prayer of thanksgiving to God for answering his prayer “for my eyes have seen your salvation”.
Mary and Joseph are quite amazed at the words being spoken. There is a lot they still do not know about their Son. But Simeon then had some ominous words for the Mother: “This child is destined for the fall and the rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”  This is the paradox of Jesus. He comes as Saviour bringing life for the whole world and yet there will be people who will reject his message of truth and life. His own people will be deeply divided over him. This will be a source of deep pain for the Mother, something she will not realize fully until she sees him die in agony before her eyes.
Simeon’s words must have been very puzzling and even alarming to Mary and Joseph. The second person to greet the parents and their Child was another deeply religious person. She was Anna. On seeing the Child, she gave thanks to God and spoke about him to everyone she met.
Now, what does this Feast and what do these readings teach us regarding the consecrated life. From Malachi we learn that Jesus is like the refiner’s fire, that He is daily refining us and purifying us if we allow ourselves to be perfected by Him. All of us are called to a life, which is truly a response without reservation to the initiative of God’s plan for us.
The Gospels teaches us that we should never forget that consecrated life is a gift, which comes from God. None of us has the right for this gift! None of us deserves this gift! It is totally a pure gift of God for a special mission.
So on this day, besides getting to know or to review how we are doing in our life, as consecrated people, we have to accept that our life, like Mary’s and Joseph’s, will be full of challenges, challenges in living the vow of poverty, or the vow of chastity, or the vow of obedience. In the beginning when one enters a community, it seems very easy. But the more we live this life, the more it requires from ourselves the dying of our own will for the will of God manifested in community decisions and of our superiors.
The Rite of the Blessing of Candles at the beginning of today’s liturgy reminds us that Jesus is the “light of revelation to all nations.” But it also calls to mind Jesus’ challenge to us in the Sermon on the Mount, that we too are meant to be the light of the world.
Our way of living and working can express our consecrated life and our mission. We Consecrated people are called to be watchmen in our society and we are all entrusted with the task of proclaiming, by word and example the new life already present in our history.
Together with the elderly Simeon and the prophetess Anna, let us rejoice for having meeting the Lord and for having received the gift of religious vocation. And together with Mary and Joseph let us live to the full our special vocation and mission by accepting the challenges ahead of us and by committing ourselves to spreading Jesus message.