THE WORD AND THE FEAST
Familiarity, Flexibility and Filiality
On this fourth Sunday of the Ordinary time, we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the World day of Prayer for Consecrated Life for this year, 2025. Past three weeks we have been seeing the gradual manifestation of the Christ, the Son of God... who gradually gets himself introduced to the people around him. The feast of the presentation, marking the 40th day after Christmas, comes to sum it all up, giving us a clue to understand what lies beneath all these - the self offering of Christ to do the will of God - behold, I come to do your will.
Bringing all of these in perspective, we have one lovely challenge posed: the Challenge of Total Offering to the Lord. Not just persons in Consecrated Life, but every one of us is called to offer ourselves totally to God and that alone can give us true meaning and real happiness in life.
Familiarity: As the Holy Family which enters the Temple with that ease and eagerness to perform their spiritual duty, so are we called to remain always familiar with the Lord. That sense familiarity can have varied levels of significance - a feeling of being the family of God, a sense of unity and love as human families, and a solidarity of families into one big family of the children of God. The feeling of the family of God, we see how Joseph and Mary come to the Temple as those who are participants in the divine plan of God, for they know they are not just "normal" parents! The sense of unity and love as human families is evinced in the togetherness of Joseph and Mary, bringing the child into the presence of God as every family of the Jews did. The fact that Simeon, Anna and many others rejoiced in the new child brought to the Temple, and found the hand of God with that child is the evocation of the solidarity that they felt with this family from Nazareth.
Flexibility: For the Holy Family from Nazareth, the presentation was not merely performing their duty, or a mere a ritual. Of course they did fulfil the rite, as a sense of fulfilment of their joy and gratitude to the Lord, but they found more things to rejoice, more insights to dwell upon and more directions to get from the Lord through holy instruments who were there! For us too, the prayer moments and celebration of sacraments cannot be reduced to mere rituals to be performed or duties to be fulfilled. We are called to live those moments with open hearts and pliable minds, in order that we be malleable as silver and gold in the hands of the smith, so that we can become what the Lord wants us to - because the Lord is making of us a great, lovable and precious ornament for Godself, provided we are ready to offer ourselves into the hands of the Lord.
Filiality: It is towards filiality, we are ultimately invited to, as the letter to the Hebrew reminds us of this. This filiality inspired and enthused, Joseph to accept his call to be the foster father taking care of the family, Mary to say her whole hearted yes to all that God had in mind, and Jesus to belong to God totally in every way following the example of his parents. What this feast has to teach us is this fact, that we are called to imitate the same self-giving of this family - Joseph who offers himself totally without lamenting anything about being kept in the dark all the time right up to the last minute when he has to execute decisions; Mary who offers herself totally although she did not fully understand what her yes would comprise of; and Jesus who offers himself totally to his Father without counting the cost up until his death on the cross! All these are prefigured and summarised in this event as the holy couple step into the Temple with their first born child... a lovely reminder to every Christian family to grow recognizant of their filiality with the Lord.