God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. On this Sunday, 2 February 2025, we celebrate the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple of Jerusalem

*First Reading From the book of the prophet Malachi (3,1-4) 

We are in the presence of a mysterious prophetic fragment seen by many as a testimony of universalism, freedom and hope. However, it is not easy to understand how to accept this text. Why does the prophet Malachi insist so much on the Temple, on the Levites (or priests), on offerings and on everything related to worship? To understand this insistence, the historical context must be taken into account. Malachi writes around 450 BC, at a time when there was no longer a king in Israel descended from David, the country was under Persian rule, and the Jewish people were ruled by priests. This is why the author insists on God's covenant with the priests who were God's representatives to his people. Malachi recalls the privileged bond between God and the descendants of Levi, but witnesses a degeneration in the conduct of this priestly caste and it was therefore very important to recall the ideal and responsibility of the priesthood. The covenant with the priests was at the service of God's covenant with his people, and it is precisely this covenant that is spoken of here: 'Immediately shall the Lord whom you seek enter into his temple; and the angel of the covenant whom you long for, behold, he is coming'. Malachi addresses all those who wait, who desire, who seek, and announces to them that they have not waited, sought, desired in vain, and their desire, their expectation will be fulfilled. And this will soon come to pass.

"And immediately he will come", the Hebrew word pit'ôm indicates both swiftness and nearness, and is as strong as the expression that follows: "here he comes". The two synonymous expressions 'immediately he will enter' and 'here he comes' frame (include) the announcement of the Lord's coming. "Immediately shall he enter into his temple, the Lord whom you seek; and the angel of the covenant whom you long for, behold, he is coming". The angel of the covenant comes to re-establish the covenant: first of all with the sons of Levi, but above all, through them, with the whole people, and we understand that this angel of the covenant is God himself. In the Bible, in order not to name God directly out of respect, the expression 'the Angel of God' is often used. It is therefore about the very coming of God. In his small book of just four pages in our Bible, Malachi speaks several times of the day of his coming; he calls it the 'day of the Lord' and each time this day appears both desirable and disquieting. For example, in the verse that immediately follows the text of today's liturgy, God says: "I will come to you for judgment" (v. 5), that is, I will deliver you from evil. This is desirable for the righteous but fearsome for those who live in evil and work evil. God's intervention is a discernment that must take place within us on the day of judgement and a messenger must precede the coming of the Lord who will call all people to conversion. As Malachi writes: "I will send my messenger to prepare the way before me. Later, Jesus will quote precisely this prophecy referring to John the Baptist. Asking the people who they had gone to see, he will say that John the Baptist is "more than a prophet. He is he of whom it is written: Behold, I send my messenger before you; he shall prepare your way before you" (Mt 11:7-10 and Lk 7:27).  With these words, Jesus identified himself as the Angel of the covenant coming to his temple and we will understand this better by delving into St Luke's Gospel today, feast of the Presentation of the Lord 

*Responsorial Psalm 23/24 (7, 8, 9, 10)

"Lift up, O ye gates, your foreheads, lift up ancient thresholds, and let the King of glory come in". This expression is solemn and somewhat surprising since it is difficult to imagine that the gates would rise. We are in a poetic context and the hyperbole serves to express the majesty of this King of glory who solemnly enters the Temple of Jerusalem. The expression 'king of glory' refers to God himself, the Lord of the universe. Our thoughts go back to the great feast of the Dedication of the first Temple, performed by King Solomon around 950 BC. In our imagination we see again the huge procession, the steps packed with worshippers... As we read in Psalm 67/68: "Your procession appears, God, the procession of my God, of my king, in the sanctuary. Singers precede, zither-players follow, along with maidens playing tambourines" (Ps 67:25-26). The Dedication of the first Temple by Solomon is described in the first book of Kings. On that occasion Solomon gathered the elders of Israel, the heads of the tribes, and the princes of the families of the children of Israel in Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Lord from the city of David, that is, from Zion in the month of Etanim, the seventh month, during the Feast of Tabernacles. When all the elders of Israel had arrived, the priests brought up the Ark, the tent of meeting, and all the sacred objects that were in the tent, and so many small and large cattle were sacrificed that they could not be counted nor enumerated. The priests placed the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord in its place, in the inner chamber of the House, the Holy of Holies, under the wings of the cherubim. The cherubim, in the Bible, do not resemble the little angels of our imagination, but are winged animals with human faces, more like large Egyptian sphinxes. In Mesopotamia, they were the guardians of temples. In the Temple of Jerusalem, above the Ark of the Covenant stood two gilded wooden statues depicting these beings. Their outstretched wings above the Ark symbolised the throne of God. In this context, we can imagine the crowd and a choir singing: 'Lift up, O gates, your foreheads, lift up ancient thresholds, and let the king of glory enter'. And another choir replies: 'Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and valiant, the Lord valiant in battle'. Behind the terms recalling war, which may surprise us today, we must read the memory of all the battles Israel needed to win a living space. Ever since the giving of the Law on Sinai, the Ark accompanied the people of Israel in every battle, a sign of God's presence in the midst of his people. The most common assumption is that this psalm is very old, since all trace of the Ark has been lost since the Babylonian exile. No biblical text clearly mentions it either during or after the exile, but it is known that it ended up as part of the booty taken away by Nebuchadnezzar during the taking of Jerusalem. Was it later hidden by Jeremiah on Mount Nebo, as some relate? No one knows. Yet this psalm was sung regularly in the ceremonies of the Temple of Jerusalem even long after the Babylonian exile, at a time when there was no longer any procession around the Ark. This is precisely why it acquired greater importance: having definitively lost the Ark of the Covenant, the tangible sign of God's presence, the psalm represented all that remained of the past splendour. It taught the people the necessary detachment: God's presence is not bound to an object, however loaded with memory. Moreover, with the passing of the centuries, this psalm took on a new meaning: "Let the King of glory come in" became the cry of impatience for the coming of the Messiah. Come at last the eternal King who will reign over renewed humanity at the end of time! He will indeed be the "Lord valiant in battle" the one who finally vanquishes Evil and the powers of death; he will indeed be the Lord, God of the universe and all mankind will share in his victory. This was the expectation of Israel, which grew from century to century.  It is not surprising, then, that the Christian liturgy sings Psalm 23/24 on the day it celebrates the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem: a way of affirming that this child is the King of glory, that is, God himself.

* Second Reading From the letter to the Hebrews ( 2:14-18)

 The theme of Christ's mediation is fundamental in the Letter to the Hebrews. It is undoubtedly useful to remember that it was written in a context of not a few controversies, and it is precisely from this letter that we can intuit the kind of objections that the first Christians of Jewish origin had to face. They were constantly being told: Your Jesus is not the Messiah; we need a priest, and he is not. It was therefore crucial for a first-century Christian to know that Christ is indeed a priest, the institution of the priesthood being central in the Old Testament, as we also noted in the first reading from the book of Malachi, which is the last of the Old Testament. Now, such an important institution in the history of the Jewish people and for its survival, could not be ignored in the New Testament. Jesus, however, according to Jewish law, was not a priest and could not aspire to be one, much less consider himself a high priest. He was not descended from David, hence from the tribe of Judah, nor from the tribe of Levi, and the author of the Epistle knows this and states it clearly (cf. Heb 7:14).  The Letter to the Hebrews answers: Jesus is not a high priest descended from Aaron, but he is in the likeness of Melchizedek.  This character mentioned in Genesis chapter 14 lived long before Moses and Aaron and is related to Abraham. Yet he is called "priest of the Most High God" (cf. Gen 14:18-20). So Jesus is indeed high priest, in his own way, in continuity with the Old Testament. This is precisely the purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews: to show us how Jesus realises the institution of the priesthood and to realise in biblical language does not mean to reproduce the Old Testament model, but to bring it to its full perfection. So let us see the three aspects of the ancient priesthood and what its essential elements were: The priest was a mediator, a member of the people who was allowed to commune with God's holiness and, in return, passed on God's gifts and blessings to the people. In today's passage, it is emphasised that Jesus is indeed a member of the people: 'Since the sons have flesh and blood in common, Christ in the same way became a partaker of them... therefore he had to make himself in all things like the brethren...' (Heb 2:14-17). To be "like" means to share the same weaknesses: temptations, trials, suffering and death. Jesus shared our poor human condition and in order to bring God closer to man, he made himself one of us, thus cancelling the distance between God and man. Moreover, the priest had to be allowed to communicate with the holiness of God who is the Holy One, that is, the totally Other (Kadosh, El Elyon, HaKadosh HaMufla), as the Bible often reminds us. To get closer to the Holy God, priests underwent rites of separation: ritual bathing, anointing, dressing and sacrifice. Even the sacred places where the priests officiated were separated from the common living spaces of the people. With Jesus, all this is turned upside down: he never separated himself from the life of his people, rather he mingled with the little ones, the marginalised, the unclean. And yet, says the Letter to the Hebrews, we have certain proof that Jesus is the Righteous One par excellence, the Son of God, the Holy One: his resurrection by defeating death has re-established the Covenant with God, which was the very goal of the priests. We are now free, and the greatest enemy of freedom is fear. But, thanks to Jesus, we no longer have anything to fear because we know God's love. The one who made us doubt this love was Satan, but through death, Jesus reduced him to powerlessness (cf. 2:14-15). Jesus' suffering shows how far God's love for us goes. Finally a question: Why does this Letter speak of the "children of Abraham" and not the "children of Adam"? It states in fact. "He cares not for the angels, but for the seed of Abraham". The answer is because Abraham, in biblical meditation, represents faith, understood as trust, and we are left with the freedom not to be children of Abraham, that is, believers. It is up to us to decide whether or not to enter into God's plan.

*From the Gospel according to Luke (2:22 - 40)

In the account of the evangelist Luke a double insistence emerges: first on the Law, then on the Spirit. In the first verses (vv. 22-24), he mentions the Law three times to emphasise that the child's life begins under the sign of the Law. It should be made clear, however, that Luke mentions the Law of Israel not as a series of written commandments and indeed one could replace the word 'Law' with 'Faith of Israel'. The life of the Family of Nazareth is all imbued with faith, and when they come to the Temple in Jerusalem to fulfil the Jewish customs, they do so with an attitude of fervour. Luke's first message is this: the salvation of all mankind took shape within the framework of the Law of Israel, of the faith of Israel: in a word, the Word of God became incarnate in this context and thus God's merciful plan for mankind was fulfilled. Then Simeon enters the scene, prompted by the Spirit, also mentioned three times. It is therefore the Spirit who inspires Simeon with the words that reveal the mystery of this child: 'My eyes have seen your salvation'. It is good to take up these words of Simeon one by one: 'My eyes have seen your salvation, prepared by you before all peoples'. The Old Testament is the story of this long and patient preparation by God for the salvation of mankind. And it is precisely the salvation of mankind, not just the people of Israel. This is exactly what Simeon points out: 'Light to reveal you to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel'. Israel's glory, in fact, lies in having been chosen not for itself, but for all mankind. As history progressed, throughout the events of the Old Testament, God's chosen people discovered more and more clearly that God's plan of salvation concerns the whole of humanity. furthermore, all this takes place in the Temple.  For Luke, the message is fundamental and he communicates it to us: we already witness the glorious entry of Jesus, Lord and Saviour, into the temple of Jerusalem, as the prophet Malachi had announced. This is precisely the opening of the first reading: 'Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and straightway the Lord whom you seek shall enter into his temple; and the angel of the covenant, whom you long for, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts'.

Luke recognises in Jesus the Angel of the Covenant who enters his temple. Simeon's words about glory and light fit perfectly in this line: 'My eyes have seen your salvation, prepared by you before all peoples: light to reveal you to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel'. Another echo of today's gospel in the Old Testament is found in the Psalm: "Who is this king of glory? Lift up, O gates, your foreheads". The psalm awaited a Messiah-king descendant of David; we know that the king of glory is this child. Luke describes a majestic scene of glory: the whole long wait of Israel is represented by two characters, Simeon and Anna. "Simeon, a righteous and godly man waited for the consolation of Israel". As for Anna, it can be assumed that if she spoke of the child to those who were waiting for the liberation of Jerusalem, it was because she too was eagerly awaiting the Messiah. When Simeon proclaims: 'Now you may let your servant go in peace, O Lord, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, prepared by you before all peoples: a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel', he clearly states that this child is the Messiah, the reflection of God's glory. With Jesus, it is the Glory of God that enters the Sanctuary; which is tantamount to saying that Jesus is the Glory, that he is God himself. From this moment, the time of the Law is fulfilled. The Angel of the Covenant has entered his temple to spread the Spirit over all mankind of every race and culture. 

P.S. For further study, since we also find this Gospel page on the feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth, I will add a few additional notes.

The expectation of the Messiah was alive in the Jewish people at the time of Jesus' birth, but not everyone spoke of it in the same way, even though the impatience was shared by all. Some spoke of the 'consolation of Israel', like Simeon, others of the 'deliverance of Jerusalem', like the prophetess Anna. Some were waiting for a king, a descendant of David, who would drive out the occupiers, representatives of the Roman power. Others awaited a completely different Messiah: Isaiah had described him at length and called him 'the Servant of God'.

To those who waited for a king, the narratives of the Annunciation and the Nativity showed that Jesus was precisely the one they were waiting for. For example, the angel at the Annunciation had told Mary: 'The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end'. Certainly the young girl from Nazareth was surprised, yet the message was clear.  Yet in the account of Jesus' presentation in the Temple, there is no mention of this aspect of the newborn child's personality. And besides, the child who enters the Temple in the arms of his parents was not born in a royal palace, but in a modest family in precarious conditions. Rather, it seems that St Luke invites us to recognise in the child presented in the Temple, the servant announced by Isaiah in chapters 42, 49, 50 and 52-53: 'This is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one whom I rejoice in (42:1)...The Lord has called me from my mother's womb, from my mother's womb he has spoken my name (I49:1)...Every morning he listens to me, so that I may hear like the disciples; the Lord God has opened my ear' (50:4-5).  Such an expression declares that this servant was very docile to the word of God; and he had received the mission to bring salvation to the whole world. Isaiah said: "I have set you as a covenant for the peoples, as the light of the nations" (42:6)... "I will make you the light of the nations, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth" (49:6). Which shows that already at the time of Isaiah it was understood that God's plan of love and salvation concerns all mankind and not only the people of Israel. Finally, Isaiah did not conceal the terrible fate that awaited this saviour: he would fulfil his mission of salvation for all, but his word, deemed too inconvenient, would arouse persecution and contempt. Let us recall this passage: 'I presented my back to the scourgers, my cheeks to those who plucked their beards' (50:6). Probably under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and thanks to his knowledge of Isaiah's prophecies, Simeon immediately understood that the child was the Servant announced by the prophet. He guessed the painful fate of Jesus, whose inspired word would be rejected by the majority of his contemporaries. He said to Mary: "Behold, he is here for the fall and resurrection of many in Israel and as a sign of contradiction - and to you also a sword will pierce your soul - so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed". Simeon understood that the hour of salvation for all mankind had come: "Now you may let your servant go in peace, O Lord, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, prepared before all peoples: light to reveal you to the nations and glory to your people Israel". Yes, Jesus is the Servant Messiah, described in Isaiah's "Songs of the Servant of the Lord" (42,49,50,52-53) the one who brings salvation: "Through him shall the will of the Lord be done" (53:10).

+Giovanni D'Ercole

I also offer at someone's request a short summary that can be circulated among the faithful. Next Sunday, 2 February 2025, we celebrate the Presentation of the Lord and

let us prepare ourselves by taking a quick look at the word of God that we will hear in Holy Mass

*First Reading From the book of the prophet Malachi (3,1-4) 

We are in the presence of a mysterious prophetic fragment seen by many as a testimony of universalism, freedom and hope. However, it is not easy to understand how to accept this text. The prophet Malachi insists so much on the Temple, the Levites (or priests), the offerings, and everything related to worship because Israel was under Persian rule and the Jewish people were ruled by the priests who were God's representatives to his people. The covenant with the priests was at the service of God's covenant with his people and it is this covenant that is at issue here. Malachi addresses all those who wait, desire, seek and announces to them that they have not waited, sought, desired in vain and their desire, their expectation will be fulfilled because soon the Angel of the Covenant will come, that is, God himself. As Malachi writes: "I will send my messenger to prepare the way before me. Later, Jesus will quote precisely this prophecy referring to John the Baptist. Asking the people who they had gone to see, he will say that John the Baptist is "more than a prophet. He is he of whom it is written: Behold, I send my messenger before you; he shall prepare your way before you" (Mt 11:7-10 and Lk 7:27).  With these words, Jesus identified himself as the Angel of the covenant coming to his temple and we will understand this better by delving into St Luke's Gospel today, feast of the Presentation of the Lord 

*Responsorial Psalm 23/24 (7, 8, 9, 10)

"Lift up, O ye gates, your foreheads, lift up ancient thresholds, and let the King of glory come in". This expression is solemn and somewhat surprising since it is difficult to imagine that the gates would rise. We are in a poetic context and the hyperbole serves to express the majesty of this King of glory who solemnly enters the Temple of Jerusalem. The expression 'king of glory' refers to God himself, the Lord of the universe. We can imagine the crowd and a choir singing: 'Lift up, O gates, your foreheads, lift up ancient thresholds, and let the King of glory enter'. And another choir responds: 'Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and valiant, the Lord valiant in battle'. This psalm was sung in the ceremonies of the Temple of Jerusalem even long after the Babylonian exile, at a time when there was no longer any procession around the Ark. This is precisely why it acquired greater importance: having definitively lost the Ark of the Covenant, the tangible sign of God's presence, the psalm represented all that remained of the past splendour. It taught the people the necessary detachment: God's presence is not bound to an object, however loaded with memory. Moreover, with the passing of the centuries, this psalm took on a new meaning: "Let the King of glory come in" became the cry of impatience for the coming of the Messiah. Come at last the eternal King who will reign over renewed humanity at the end of time! This was the expectation of Israel, growing from century to century.  No wonder, then, that the Christian liturgy sings Psalm 23/24 on the day it celebrates the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem: a way of affirming that this child is the King of glory, that is, God himself.

* Second Reading From the letter to the Hebrews ( 2:14-18)

 The theme of Christ's mediation is fundamental in the Letter to the Hebrews. It is undoubtedly useful to remember that it was written in a context of not a few controversies, and it is precisely from this letter that we can intuit the kind of objections that the first Christians of Jewish origin had to face. They were constantly being told: Your Jesus is not the Messiah; we need a priest, and he is not. It was therefore crucial for a first-century Christian to know that Christ is indeed a priest. Jesus, however, according to Jewish law, was not a priest and could not aspire to be one, much less consider himself a high priest. The Letter to the Hebrews answers: Jesus is not a high priest descended from Aaron, but he is in the likeness of Melchizedek, a character who appears in Genesis chapter 14 and lived long before Moses and Aaron and is related to Abraham. Yet he is called "priest of the Most High God" (cf. Gen 14:18-20). So Jesus is indeed high priest, in his own way, in continuity with the Old Testament. This is precisely the purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews: to show us how Jesus realises the institution of the priesthood, and to realise in biblical language does not mean to reproduce the Old Testament model, but to bring it to its full perfection. Finally a question: Why does this Letter speak of the "sons of Abraham" and not the "sons of Adam"? Indeed, it says. "He cares not for the angels, but for the seed of Abraham". The answer is because Abraham, in biblical meditation, represents faith, understood as trust, and we are left with the freedom not to be children of Abraham, that is, believers. It is up to us to decide whether or not to enter into God's plan.

*From the Gospel according to Luke (2:22 - 40)

In the account of the evangelist Luke a double insistence emerges: first on the Law, then on the Spirit. In the first verses (vv. 22-24), he mentions the Law three times to emphasise that the child's life begins under the sign of the Law. It should be made clear, however, that Luke mentions the Law of Israel not as a series of written commandments and indeed one could replace the word "Law" with "Faith of Israel" and the life of the Family of Nazareth is all imbued with this faith. Luke's first message is this: the salvation of all humanity took shape within the framework of the Law of Israel, of the faith of Israel: in a word, the Word of God became incarnate in this context and thus God's merciful plan for humanity was fulfilled. Then Simeon enters the scene, prompted by the Spirit, also mentioned three times. It is therefore the Spirit who inspires Simeon with the words that reveal the mystery of this child: "My eyes have seen your salvation, prepared by you before all peoples". The Old Testament is the story of this long and patient preparation by God for the salvation of mankind. And it is precisely the salvation of mankind, not just the people of Israel. This is exactly what Simeon points out: 'Light to reveal you to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel'. The glory of Israel, in fact, lies in having been chosen not for itself, but for all mankind. For Luke, the message is fundamental and he communicates it to us: we already witness the glorious entry of Jesus, Lord and Saviour, into the temple of Jerusalem, as the prophet Malachi had announced. Luke recognises in Jesus the Angel of the Covenant entering his temple. The psalm awaited a Messiah-king descendant of David; we know that the king of glory is this child. Luke describes a majestic scene of glory: the whole long wait of Israel is represented by two characters, Simeon and Anna. "Simeon, a righteous and godly man waited for the consolation of Israel". As for Anna, it can be assumed that if she spoke of the child to those who were waiting for the liberation of Jerusalem, it was because she too was eagerly awaiting the Messiah. When Simeon proclaims: 'Now you may let your servant go in peace, O Lord, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation', he clearly states that this child is the Messiah. With Jesus, the Glory of God enters the Sanctuary; which is equivalent to saying that Jesus is the Glory, God himself entered his temple to spread the Spirit over all mankind.

+Giovanni D'Ercole