Presentation of the Lord

Presentation of the Lord
In pursuit of the truth- cinops be gone, Feast - Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013

The parents of Jesus brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.
From a Bavarian radio broadcast by now Pope Benedict XVI - Feb. 2nd, 1980:

“There is little indication in our ordinary everyday life today that on Feb. 2nd we celebrate an ancient feast of both East and West that once played an important role among our rural population: our Lady’s Feast of Candlemas.

“It is a feast in which many historical currents converge so that it glows in many different colors. Its immediate occasion is the remembrance that, on the 40th day after his birth, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem in order to offer there the prescribed sacrifice of purification.

“From the scene as depicted by Luke, the liturgy has selected one episode in particular: the meeting between the Child Jesus and the aged Simeon the feast is consequentially known in the Greek church by the name Hypapantic: meeting. In this meeting between the Child and the old man, the Church depicts the encounter between the disintegrating heathen world and the era beginning in Christ, between the waning of the Old Testament and the new time of the Church of the Gentiles.

“What the Church is underscoring here is more than the ceaseless alternation of dying and becoming, more than the consoling fact that a new generation with new ideas and new hopes always succeeds the old one. Were that all that was commemorated here, then the Child would have offered no hope for Simon, but only for himself.

“But it is more than that; it is hope for everyone, but it is a hope that extends beyond death. With this thought, we come to the second point the liturgy emphasize that on this day. It began with the word of Simeon, who calls the Child “a light of revelation to the Gentiles”. As a result of this word, the day has been made a feast of lights. The warm light of the candles appeals to the senses as a symbol of the greater light that emanates for all times from the person of Jesus.” p. 46 - Feb. 2nd meditation, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Co-Workers of the Truth”, Meditations for Every Day of the Year, Ignatius Press, 1992.

Excerpts from the meditation of Jan. 23rd, “Today, too, the future of the Church can and will depend only on the strength of those who have deep roots and who live the pure fullness of their faith…. It will be a spiritualized Church that does not rely on a political mandate and that curries favor with right as little as with the left….

“The way will be long and wearisome, just as was the way that led from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution - which made it fashionable even for bishops to deride dogmas and perhaps, even, to let it be known that the very existence of God was not a certainty for them - to the renewal of the 19th century. But after the purification of these uprootings a great strength will emanate from a spiritualized and simplified Church….

“Then they will discover the small community of believers as something entirely new - as a hope that is meant for them, as an answer they have always sought in secret. Thus it seems certain to me that very hard times await the Church. Her own crisis has as yet hardly begun.”

George H. Kubeck, It was a wise and courageous decision on the part of our Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, “Effective immediately I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.” It will satisfy most of the informed people in the diocese.