“Lift up your heads, O gates; rise up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may enter!” Psalm 24
Happy Feast of the Presentation of the Lord! I had an “aha!” moment today at mass, a revelation to which I should very much like to put words. But something tells me it will be a tough job.
I was (am) blessed with a mom who taught me how to pray the rosary at a very young age. And she even tried to make it interesting for us, if that is all possible for kids. I remember praying the scriptural rosary together with my siblings, the drill as follows: one kid says the scripture, and then another leads the Hail Mary, and the rest of the family replies. On one occasion, a moment that will be forever burned in my memory, my little brother was leading the scriptures on the Fourth Joyful Mystery, the Presentation of the Lord Jesus in the Temple. He came to the moment in today’s Gospel reading from Luke: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the holy Spirit was upon him” (Lk 2:25), but he read it, “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Cinnamon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the constellation of Israel…” This same little bro is getting married this spring, and I can hardly believe it. He’s grown into such a good man.
But this was SORT OF an aside: I really wanted to talk about another childhood impression of this decade of Our Lady’s rosary. Because the scriptural rosary cut up the story into small pieces, one of the verses that remains with me is, “He took the child into his arms and blessed God,” but it cuts off right before “and said,” and so I often heard this verse out of its (very) immediate context. In my R. C. way, I pictured Simeon like a Catholic priest, taking the little Lord Jesus into his arms, and making the sign of the cross on the Lord’s little forehead (although I even knew that they were, of course, Jewish, and that no sign of the cross had really been invented yet). I would often meditate on that phrase, “and blessed God,” seeing in my head Simeon’s actual blessing Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. Simeon, to me, was aware he had God in his arms.
A few weeks ago, when I walked into Holy Rosary, my home away from home in Ottawa, I sensed the Lord saying from the tabernacle, “Prepare yourself! It’s coming!” My immediate response (ie: human response) was negative. Oh no! What was coming? But the Lord’s tone was actually one of JOY and exaltation! “Why do you assume the negative?” he said. For the last few weeks, I have been waiting in expectation for him to show up. And today he came.
My moment of shock and awe, then, was this: we bless God. He has no need of my praise, blessing, or exaltation, but he asks it of me, and when I give it, he is blessed. And what is blessing, anyhow? According to my good friend the CCC, blessing is the acceptance of the gift of grace: “In blessing, God’s gift and man’s acceptance of it are united in dialogue with each other. The prayer of blessing is man’s response to God’s gifts” (CCC 2626). So what is blessing? To bless God, we receive the little Lord Jesus into our arms: we say fiat with the Blessed Mother. Needless to say, my Holy Communion today took on a different perspective; furthermore, the mass is “the divine blessing fully revealed and communicated” (CCC 1082). We bless God by receiving him, individually, and as the Church.
It sounds so simple, but it is a profound mystery. How is it that I, a fallen human being, can bless this almighty King of Glory? And “merely” by receiving him? Even that act, the act of the will to say yes to him, is surrounded by grace. And yet, today, I sensed his pleasure and fatherly pride as I tried, in my human way, to really receive him, to really hold him. And now, like the prophetess Anna, I wish to “[speak] of him to all that [look] for the redemption of Israel” (Lk 2:38). I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for redemption. Tomorrow I shall receive that Redemption again, I choose him: his name is Jesus.
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