01 February 2025 – The Presentation of the Lord (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

The Presentation of the Lord is a story of paradoxes.

It is about a baby who is presented in the temple yet he is true temple.
It is about an offering to God yet it is God offering Himself to us.
It is about the meeting point of two testaments, the Old and the New, the aged Simeon and Anna who have spent their whole lives waiting for this moment and Christ, the New Testament, who is fulfilling all their waiting.

The temple is where divinity and humanity embrace, where past and future converge. And like every true spiritual encounter, this moment is both deeply personal and life-changing for everyone. It speaks to the tension, even within us. The old ways we cling and the new life God is calling us into.

The same paradox exist in our own journey of faith. We hold on to what we know, what feels safe and yet God is always inviting us into something deeper, something more radiant. And that is why today’s Feast is not merely about Jesus being presented in the temple. It is about how we too are called to be presented before God. Purified and transformed into light bearers.

But this transformation comes with a cost.

The Prophet Malachi gives an unsettling image of God’s coming. Who  will remain standing when He appears? He is like the refiner’s fire, the fuller’s alkali. Now the fuller’s job was to cleanse and whiten cloth. So can you imagine using this to bring this home of purification, a message of purification. In Jerusalem, the cleansing process took place in the fuller’s field, outside the city, because of the smell. And alkali is a kind of soap. So just imagine what that meant.

Now at first this sounds intimidating. We often like to think of God’s coming as peaceful, as comforting. But Malachi reminds us that divine encounter is often a refining fire. Not destructive but purifying. Purifying.

And purification is never easy. It requires us to let go of our illusions, to surrender control, to allow God to shape us. We know what our illusions are. We are constantly reminded of it. But here we are asked to let go of it. It is exactly what we resist the most. We cling (this sounds cliched and you probably heard this but this is the issue). We cling to our ego.

It is about us. We cling to our righteousness. We cling to our carefully constructed identities. We do. And we struggle. You and I struggle and that keeps us stagnant and never being able to move forward because the ego is fed, righteousness is lived and we are ‘happy‘.

But as long as we hold on to these, we remain blind to the deeper reality of God’s presence. We will remain just here and we will be moving from one celebration to another. Maybe that is why so many of us, priests and religious and laity, go through life without truly seeing divine moments right in front of us.

Simeon and Anna saw what no one else in the temple saw. They saw God in a helpless baby. They saw God in a helpless baby and that seeing did not come from years of study or religious rituals. It came from deep contemplation, from long years of waiting with open hearts. Simeon’s words today in the Gospel are so deep and beautiful:

My eyes have seen the salvation.

Fantastic words! My eyes have seen the salvation or seen your salvation. Notice he did not say ‘Now I understand. Oh, now I have the proof.‘ He simply sees.

That is the journey of true faith, moving from knowing to unknowing. I did not get that wrong. From knowing to unknowing. Let me explain that.

Faith is not just about intellectual understanding or having all the right answers. As we grow in faith and I am sure some of you experience that. As we grow in faith, we realise that God is always beyond our grasp. We don’t understand. And true wisdom often means embracing mystery rather than certainty. We have to come to that to experience it.

And we are there. We can.

This echoes what Saint Gregory of Nyssa said:
The idea that our journey toward God is endless. Always moving deeper and deeper into mystery.

This is something that you cannot put your hands and mind. That is where it is. That is our journey of faith. So it is:-
~ From knowing to unknowing. Let us think about that. Pray about it.
~ From grasping to surrendering. That is our journey of faith.
~ From controlling to simply seeing.

Simeon had no need for certainty, no need for guarantees, no need for intellectual debate. He held the Christ child in his arms. He held the Christ child in his arms and that was enough. And in that moment, his waiting turned into peace. His longing turned into fulfillment. 

And what exactly had Simeon seen? What was this salvation that allowed him to say:
Now, Lord, you may let your servant go in peace.
What was it?

Surely salvation is more than personal fulfillment. It is the breaking of chains, the opening of eyes, the restoration of what was lost. It is the end of all separation between God and humanity, between heaven and earth and between fear and love. That is the most tangible thing for us. And there is no more separation.

And at the heart of this salvation is freedom. Not just from external oppression but from this deepest captivity of all. What do you think captures us? What is our captivity? What is the captivity that keeps us from having freedom? What do you think it is?

I think it is FEAR. The captivity of fear.

And to handle that we need to go to the Second Reading. The letter to the Hebrews tells us why Jesus came. We hear He shared fully in our humanity so that by His death He might set free those who all their lives were held in the slavery of the fear of death.

Here is this great paradox.

Jesus enters the temple, a place where sacrifices were made to appease God because people were frightened. They were told to be frighten of God. And yet, He himself is the sacrifice that ends all fear. He does not come to reinforce the old system of fear and unworthiness. He doesn’t.

He comes to dismantle it. And He is still trying to dismantle it today because that is still existent in some way or other. Yet many of us still live trapped in that old system. We approach faith as if God needs to be convinced to love us. Many people spew this kind of narrative, that we need to please Him before He loves us. They frighten us like as if we were never quite enough. But Hebrews remind us:
Jesus comes so that we no longer live in fear.

And yet, letting go of fear is not easy. Fear makes us feel in control. But today’s Feast tells us if you truly see Christ, you no longer need to grasp. You no longer need to control. You no longer need to perform. A lot of what we do is performance.

Today’s Feast tells us you can rest.

Simeon calls Jesus ‘A light of revelation to the gentiles and glory for Israel.‘

And what does light do? It does not grasp or demand. It simply shines. It illuminates, it reveals and is shared. 

The more we live in fear, the more we hide our light. 
But the more we allow God to purify us, the more we shine.

The Saints, the Mystics, the truly free people among us, they do not shine because they are perfect. They shine because they have allowed God to strip them of their small selves. 

This is our calling, my dear brothers and sisters. This is our calling too to become light bearers, to be like Simeon and Anna, people who are awake, people who can see beyond appearances, people who recognise Christ in unexpected places.

So maybe today’s Feast is an invitation. Let go of fear. Let go of needing to be right. Let go of the ego’s constant grasping to control and simply see.

See Christ.
See Christ in the silence. Try that.
See Christ in the poor. You need to, you must.
See Christ in the ones who seem unimportant.
And see Christ even in yourself.

Then like Simeon, you too will be able to say:
Now, Lord, I can depart in peace for my eyes have seen Your salvation.

Amen.

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