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Bringing a new life into the world is an astonishing responsibility. How many new parents have looked down at their baby in the crib, then looked up at each other and wondered, “What have we done?”
This is why, through most of history, hardly any culture has left child rearing up to two hapless newborn parents alone. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends join together in traditional societies to help provide support, structure, a common set of values, and many pairs of watchful eyes.
When confronted with the tiny new life of infinite potential, our religious sensibilities kick in as well; and naturally enough, we turn to God, not only in gratitude but in prayer for help and blessing.
Marking the beginnings of new life and new families is something all cultures and religions do in some way. As Luke takes pains to show us, Mary and her family plunged right into that river of wisdom and strength, fulfilling the obligations that all Jewish families embraced upon the birth of a child.
First, Luke notes, Jesus was circumcised (see Luke 2:21) at the traditional age of eight days, the age prescribed by God to Abraham (see Genesis 17:12). Circumcision was the sign of a boy’s membership in the covenant between God and Israel, the point at which he was also named. During Jesus’ time, which was some decades before the synagogue had really developed into a center for learning, a boy was usually circumcised at home by his own father.
Catholics have traditionally celebrated the feast of the Circumcision on January 1, eight days after December 25. On today’s liturgical calendar, it is overshadowed by the celebration of Mary, Mother of God, but clearly the two are related as celebrations of Jesus’ human nature.
After the circumcision, Luke describes yet another journey for Mary and Joseph and the baby—a journey to Jerusalem from either Nazareth or Bethlehem to the Temple.
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:22-24)
Two things are apparently going on here, and whether Luke has confused the two rituals or is relying on a jumbled report is not known. We’ll briefly tease them apart.
In addition to circumcision, two other birth-related rituals were prescribed for Jewish people during this period. First was the “presentation” of a child to the Temple. As Luke indicates, it is rooted in the tradition first described in Exodus 13 of consecrating or dedicating a firstborn child to the Lord for the Lord’s service. The importance of the firstborn shouldn’t be a surprise—many sacrifices called for the first fruits of a harvest or the firstborn animal. In faith we give God the first fruits of our labor, believing that he deserves the beauty of this new life in thanksgiving, and trusting that there will be more to follow for our own needs.
By Jesus’ time, however, the ritual had changed a bit. An entire tribe of Israel was exclusively dedicated to the service of God in the Temple—the Levites—so it was no longer the practice for every family to literally give over the firstborn child to that service. The act was symbolic, and it was actually followed by a “buying back” of the child (five sheckels in the first century) for those not in the Levitical tribe. Animal sacrifice was, of course, still a part of Jewish practice and would be until the destruction of the Temple in a.d. 66, so that was a part of the ritual as well. The normal offering would be a newborn lamb, along with two turtledoves or two pigeons. The lamb could be dispensed with if the family was poor, and as we see from Luke’s account, such was the case with Jesus’ family.
But there’s something else in those verses—a reference to “purification.” Purification was a practice, also rooted in ancient Jewish tradition (see Leviticus 12), related to the ritual purity of women after childbirth.
Traditional Judaism had extensive and detailed purity laws. Scholars debate the origins and purpose of these laws, but all agree that the essence of them was to set God’s people apart as holy—a living, breathing symbol of God’s holy presence in the world.
Sometimes people confuse ritual impurity with sinfulness. This was not how the Jews of Jesus’ time understood it at all. Ritual purity related to worship and the ability to enter into the presence of God through worship. One can only approach God if one is “clean” in the sense of being undefiled.
Aside from food concerns, a major area for Jewish ritual purity had to do with the body, and particularly contact with excretions, especially blood and running, open sores. Women were considered ritually unclean during and a few days after their menstrual periods. For the same reason, they were considered ritually impure after childbirth.
Leviticus 12 says that in order for women to be clean again, they must undergo a purification: thirty-three days after the birth of a boy and sixty-six days after the birth of a girl.
At that point, the woman undergoes a ritual washing. This kind of ritual washing is still a part of Jewish life today, particularly among the Orthodox.
We can’t say for sure what Mary would have done, but she may have undergone her ritual purification in the Temple. Perhaps the family did use the journey to Jerusalem to celebrate both Jesus’ presentation and Mary’s purification.
What Mary and Joseph were doing, Luke makes clear, is fulfilling their religious duties, participating in rituals that identified them as part of God’s people, obeying God’s laws, and affirming their participation in the covenant.
Religious obligations can so often seem like just that—obligations. Not surprising, since in Catholic practice, the commitment to attend Sunday Mass is actually called an “obligation.”
Who hasn’t experienced the consequences? Who hasn’t struggled at times to see the point? Who hasn’t chafed at requirements, suspected that spiritual growth might better be found in freedom from these obligations, wondered if doing it our own way on our time, creating our own rituals and relying on our own intuitions of when, where, and how to honor God would better serve us?
When those thoughts hit, it might be a good time to look at Mary.
Mary, graced with a more intimate knowledge of God than any of us could ever enjoy, carrying him within her own body for nine months, nursing him at her breast, reflecting for almost a year now on the words of an angel, didn’t and couldn’t see herself beyond all religious obligation. She did not and could not put herself above and beyond the wisdom and practices of God’s people.
So she went to Jerusalem, presented her baby, presented herself, and offered sacrifice.
As we’ve said before, what Mary experienced was not just between her and God. In fact, the “her” at the heart of this wasn’t just herself, Mary. She stands for all of us, the humanity to whom God reaches out and embraces, seeking to be embraced in turn.
In the Magnificat, Mary expresses gratitude not only for what God has done for her but also for the amazing, surprising twist in God’s story of mercy and redemption for the whole world. So Mary doesn’t stay by herself in the village, tending to her child, keeping him to herself. She immerses them both in their tradition, embracing the obligations because they are all a sign of God’s love. These rituals are meeting places between God and his people, a place where now God steps again, in the arms of his mother.
Perhaps what we read and absorb in Luke can be an encouragement to us as we fulfill our own religious obligations. Perhaps it can help us view them more joyously, as chances to enter into the love song of God’s people and their movement towards God, and be open to the surprises, revelations, and comfort that we might experience there if we approach with truly open hearts.
Encounters at the Temple
As Luke tells it, the Holy Family encounters two fascinating people at the Temple, two prophets, one male and one female:
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all
peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:25-38)
Simeon’s prayer is called the Nunc Dimittis and is prayed every night at Compline, the last prayer of the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours. Two things stand out to us from Simeon’s prayer: the image of light and what he says to Mary.
Simeon holds the baby Jesus and describes him as a “light for revelation to the Gentiles.” In these words, we can clearly hear Isaiah, prophesying hundreds of years before, comforting suffering Israel with the news that indeed a time would come when their pain would end and God would send them a redeemer who would—and this is important—be a light to the whole world, Gentiles and Jews alike (see Isaiah 9:1-3). Here, in the baby held in his arms, Simeon, a man of age and wisdom, discerns the light.
The Presentation of the Lord is a feast that is celebrated in the West on February 2 and is traditionally known as Candlemas. Inspired by Simeon’s insight into Jesus’ identity, Christians celebrate this day with candles; for centuries, a procession with candles was an integral part of the feast, and today, at the very least, a blessing of candles plays a role in the Mass.
Simeon’s words to Mary, though, are startling. He speaks of the child as an occasion for division—traditionally translated in the well-known phrase, “a sign of contradiction.” Many will follow, he says, but many will stand in opposition.
How true we know this to be!
And then, what of Mary?
Every mother, looking at her new baby, has high hopes and dreams for that baby. But at the same time, she has fears. She checks the baby during the night, watching his tiny chest rise and fall, listening for breathing sounds. She watches older children lurching toward trouble, and she prays. In her mind, she knows that no one can avoid pain and suffering, but she can’t imagine anything happening to her own; she can’t imagine what it would feel like to see her own child suffer.
It might just feel like a sword through her soul.
For what Simeon reveals here in his aged eyes, his trembling arms holding the quiet baby, is what they all know. Standing there in the river of Jewish tradition, there in the Temple, near the presence of the Most High, they know the fate of prophets. They know the continual suffering of God’s people. Even though the hopes and expectations of a messiah are all about glory and victory, they remember, perhaps, the other image Isaiah describes, a figure chosen by God, one who serves, and one who suffers.
So Mary takes the baby back after the prophetess Anna has had her say, returning to ordinary life with this extraordinary child with even more to think about than before.
So much truth is revealed in the midst of these simple acts: God’s light shines, here and now, through Jesus. After all, how much more clarity about God’s love for us do we need beyond the reality of his presence among us as a helpless child?
Still more—the world, infected by sin, resents this light that shows sin and evil for what it is and that shines brightly, calling us to make a choice.
The way to the final, eternal banquet God seeks to lay out for all of creation is one of pain. Not because God wants it so, but because we know, through our own lives, that the more intensely the light of love shines, the more vigorously darkness resists.
This way to eternity lived in God’s light, the light that shines forth from the baby’s eyes, will hurt. And once again, this truth that we all know, that we all face, that we all struggle through is faced first by Mary.
An excerpt from “Mary and the Christian Life”.
We are living in the signs of time that is indeed full of contradictions, a time of confusions which is good or bad but somehow everything is the same.. which one is real and genuine? thenn the conclusion is whatever...I personally believe that is this situation we need the hearth of Simeon who easily sees the light from the Savior whom he had waited for so long that he has the courage to say, “Now you let your servant go in peace, your word has been fulfilled...” He has the light to lead him from his darkness and confusion..If we could have the light of the Lord in our hearts , it would be easy for us to distinguish what is real from what is pseudo...everyday we need to enkindle our hearts with the light of the Lord through his life saving WORD…