Luke 2:22 – 40
Today is Superbowl Sunday
and many of us will be celebrating this unique American holiday by
eating salty foods, drinking beer, and screaming at the television
set. To our surprise, we were recently contacted by one of our
children, who offered to get us a flat screen television and even
install it for us in time to watch the Supeerbowl. I didn't have the
heart to tell her that we probably wouldn't watch the superbowl. And
as for the flat screen tv...
We bought a new
television set 36 years ago when we moved here. It still works, and
I had it all rigged up to do everything I wanted it to do, although I
don’t have any vcr tapes anymore and precious few dvd’s. We
don’t watch the news and any entertainment comes from netflix. Our
antique television set annoys our children. Which of course is
another reason to keep it. My wife and I have different
temperaments; she doesn’t like change and I don’t like to replace
something that’s working, so we said no, not now.
But it got me thinking.
What do we do with gifts? We’ve given and received many gifts down
through the years, and many of them have gone unused. They were
accepted with thanks, but weren’t things we used and so gathered
dust.
Some gifts are forced
upon you. My daughters many years ago decided their mother would be
lonely without them so they bought her a parakeet. My wife was
re-learning the organ in those days and the parakeet either thought
it could sing along or was protesting. But my wife was happy when
the parakeet lived out its short life span.
And there are those
people that if you give them a gift, they feel obligated to give you
something back that is worth more. My in-laws were like that.
The feast of the
presentation which we celebrate today is all about the greatest gift
of all. As per custom, Mary and Joseph are giving back to God the
gift they have received -- their first-born son. The average couple
would have then symbolically offered a couple of birds or if they
were well off, an animal, and then would have taken the child back.
This was recognition that the child came from God. But the
difference here is that someone places the child in the arms of
Simeon, who is a symbol for the righteous people of Israel, the
people who have been waiting. And Simeon recognizes the gift that is
the child. Luke turns our attention to Anna as well. Her age, her
seven year marriage, the tribe she came from and her father’s name
all are heavy with symbolism, but we don’t have time for that here.
Anna is a symbol of the rest of humanity who have been waiting for
Israel to lead them out of the darkness. And these two elderly
people accept the gift of the child with joy.
There are times, I think,
that we don’t fully appreciate our Lord as a gift. Sometimes we
flat out refuse the gift; we don’t want to have to change our ways;
to accept Jesus fully is a commitment. There are times when we make
an effort to accept the Son of God into our lives, but eventually we
find ourselves going through the motions in our religious practices;
we even sometimes wish that we could be like our neighbors who have
no faith and yet seem happy. And there are times when we don’t
treat God’s Son as a gift at all. We have the attitude that unless
we meet the standards, unless we do good works and lead sinless
lives, we won’t get the gift; we feel as though God is asking a
quid pro quo, to use a term that has been in the news a lot.
But the truth is that the
gift of God’s Son to humanity is a gift without strings, a gift
given to make us happy forever, a gift that we only have to accept.
When you think about it,
every Mass acts out exactly what God does for us. We take ordinary
bread and wine, and through God’s power it becomes the real
presence of His Son. We offer this gift to the Father because we can
offer nothing greater; and he gives it right back to us as food for
body and soul.
Today on the feast of the
Presentation let us be filled with gratitude that we have been given
God’s son because the Father loves us so much and wants nothing
from us but that we love him back. And let us resolve to spend our
lives loving him back.
