Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
(Lk. 2.29-32)
Today's Gospel (Mk. 1.29-39, click here to read it) tells of Our Lord Jesus healing St. Peter's mother in law, then taking the ministry throughout the Galilee region, healing others and freeing them from the oppression of demons. Likewise, today falls within what is called an octave, an eight-day period composed of a Feast of the Christian year and the subsequent seven days. This Sunday falls within the Octave of the Presentation, a feast not so much about a large rodent given the unfair burden of weather forecasting and all about an even greater forecast.
Forty days after the birth of Jesus, the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph went to Jerusalem to perform the rites specific to the forty days after the birth of an eldest child who happens to be male. In part it was a symbolic buy-back of the child in remembrance that the first born of Egypt died that Passover night long ago, it was a symbolic cleansing of the woman from the physical and spiritual trauma associated with childbirth, and it was also thanksgiving for the gift of a new child. This particular observance, already heavy with meaning, took a new twist with this family when a couple of elderly and respected members of the Temple community took a personal interest in the child.
The old gentleman went so far as to take the infant Jesus from Mary His Mother and bless Him and make prediction about what this child would later do. The core of his prophecy is recited nightly during evening prayers throughout the world today, that the child would be the light of the world, not just that of His people. It was a prediction of deliverance, of returning people to the light of God's presence from the night of God's absence, of hope for a world without hope. Later this would be borne out when this child became an adult, and began healing people from their illnesses, raising the dead, casting out spiritual oppressors, and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Later on, this same Jesus would give His life as the ultimate Passover offering for the deliverance of all humanity from Sin and Death.
Like Simeon, that old gentleman, and Anna, the prophetess, we too can finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that our deliverer has come.
Icon depicted from the Menologion of Basil II, 10th Century, CE
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