Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, a Feast of Light. I’m in the middle of a small monastery near Peoria, in the middle of the night, darkness, waiting for the “light” of a new day. Yes, a new day is always dawning, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, in the middle of our constant yearnings and doubts.
Simeon and Anna waited decades, literally, for this encounter with a baby, God, to be held and embraced. Jesus was held and cuddled by elders of the Temple, a child who would some 33 years later, enter that same Temple and cleanse it of hypocrisy. This rather violent action was preparing for the new Temple, Jesus, who would create a new “place” of worship WITHIN the human race, made up OFthe human race. A building rising on the foundation of its founder, His Passionate love, suffering, death and Resurrection, with us, His People. We “rise” in this living Temple, people of all shapes, shades, and places of the heart.
Light, THE Light, wants nothing mote than to shine through each human, like glass, that is colored or stained by the uniqueness of how our Creator created us. Jesus is always being “presented” within the little temples of our churches every time we gather at Eucharist. Jesus does to us what Simeón did to Him as a week old infant: Jesus wraps his “arms” around us through Word, Body, Blood, fellow people.
Eucharist is what connects us to Christ and each other, so that we can be “presented” to the world, by Christ, to be “light” in the darkness of loneliness, division and suffering. We become His healing Presence with arms that embrace each other in mercy, acceptance, healing, strengthening the very Foundation of this glorious Temple, the most beautiful “building” in all of humanity, in all the cosmos and universe.... a building built with and by the greatest Architect this world will ever know.
Peace, Joy,
Fr. Frank