The Presentation Of The Child Jesus In The Temple
Since already so much had been revealed about the little Infant born in the stable of Bethlehem by the two Angels, who had appeared on two separate occasions to Mary and Joseph, it is only natural that His Mother and Fosterfather talked amongst themselves about the great significance of His conception and birth. They knew He was God; they knew He was the Son of God; they knew that after Him there had been made mention of a third Person in the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, by whose power the Child had been conceived. They knew that He had come down “to save His people from their sins”. And the stark forebodings that this “saving from sin” would be accomplished under pain and great sufferings had become engraved in their souls from two sources: one of these had been the cold, the poverty and the abandon which had accompanied His birth in a stable, and the other source had been the Messianic parts which lay spread out over the Books of Sacred Scripture.
Long before ‘the Son of Man’ explained these parts to two of His disciples on their way to Emmaus had the Light of the Holy Spirit enlightened the minds of the Mother of God and of His fosterfather about these revelations, so that they could attune their whole spirituality to the fathomless Truth: “Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer and so enter into His Glory?” (Lk. 24:26).
And thus, when the day had arrived that their Child should be taken to the Temple of the Lord to be literally “offered up to the Father”, they were fully aware of what, at this moment in time, this Sacrifice entailed. And when the two turtle doves had been killed, and their little bodies lay lifeless on the altar of God, they perceived that this was only a prefiguration of the price the adorable Son of this Father was prepared to pay ‘for the redemption from sins’. And with this tiny sacrifice of the day, they united their whole selves with the great Sacrifice still to come, that had been sealed on this very day by the act they had just accomplished: the offering up of Mary’s Son to His Father.
How do we know that this is true? That such great understanding of God’s mysteries had already taken hold of their innermost core? We know this first of all from what followed immediately after this immolation and secondly from what a saintly Pope has said about this event.
At the closure of Our Lord’s Presentation in the Temple there arrived on the scene a man who to all intents and purposes represented the sum-total of all the ancient prophets. From what he told Our Lady and Her husband, he showed that he was well versed in the Sacred Scriptures and especially in the Messianic prophesies concerning the life of the Messiah, which meant of the Babe in his arms, as the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that this little Child was at last the long-awaited Messiah. This is what he told them:
“You see this Child?
He is destined for the fall and for the rising of many in Israel.
Destined to be a sign that is rejected.
And a sword will pierce your own soul too,
so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare.”
Now, as we have indicated already in a few places in this book, it is not to be assumed that a mere mortal, no matter how holy he or she may be - and this man Simeon has gone down into history as a holy man who lived with the Holy Spirit - would know more about the Messianic prophesies than the Immaculate Conception who had to decide in the Light from above if this Messiah was to be born from Her. With the fulness of grace, God had given Her the fulness of understanding in all matters that pertained to Her decision, so that Her consent be given not only freely but in complete knowledge as befitted the most momentous decision up till then in the human race. She had read all there was to know about the coming Messiah, that He would be “a thing despised and rejected by men; a Man of sorrow, familiar with suffering” (Is. 53:2-3). And after Her consent and the subsequent Incarnation, She and Her husband knew that it was said about the Child whom Simeon had taken in his arms. And to consolidate that this venerable old man had told them nothing that they did not already know, we may go to His Holiness Pope John Paul II, who in his celebrated encyclical “Redemptoris Mater” of 1987 has this to say when he dealt with Mary’s consent at the Incarnation, and later on with Simeon’s prediction in the Temple:
“The Divine Plan of Salvation which was fully revealed to us with the coming of
Christ, is eternal ... It reserves a special place for the ‘Woman’ ...” [7]
Since Christ had come at His Incarnation, the divine plan of Salvation had thus been fully revealed at the Incarnation. And so, we ask, how special a place? And in anticipation of the next quote, how special a blessing? From the manner in which Our Lady gave Her consent to God, “in the name of all mankind”, according to one other Holy Father: Pope Paul VI in “Marialis Cultus”, of 1974, [28], which parallels the way in which Adam and Eve gave their consent in name of all of us to the devil at the moment of the Fall, we have been made aware that an intimate comprehension of the deep significance of this sacred moment was far from absent in Our Lady. We can again quote “Redemptoris Mater” on this:
“When we read that the messenger addresses Mary as ‘full of grace’, the Gospel context WHICH MINGLES REVELATION AND ANCIENT PROMISES, enables us to understand that this is a special blessing” [8].
Authoritative quotes such as these show quite plainly that the teaching Church is aware of the way God imparted His Divine insights to ‘The Woman’: how Our Lady’s knowledge of Sacred Scripture, the Ancient Prophecies, is raised to full understanding in the Light of Revelation at the ‘coming of Christ’, the moment of the Incarnation.
Perhaps the most important part of Mary’s thorough understanding ‘through the mingling of Revelation and Ancient Promises’ is brought to light in this quote:
“As we see from the words of the Proto-Gospel, the victory of the Woman’s Son will not take place without a hard struggle, a struggle that is to extend through the whole of human history. The ‘enmity’ (between the Woman and the serpent) foretold at the beginning ...
Mary, Mother of the Word Incarnate is placed at the very centre of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of Salvation itself” [R.M., 11].
So Mary realised from the beginning that the Mother of the Messiah, the ‘Woman of Genesis’, the ‘New Eve’, would be at the centre of an Everlasting Enmity, engaged with the ‘New Adam’ and all their children in a mortal combat with ‘the seed of the serpent’. Someone is going to die ...
We have now arrived at the second source of our assertion: that the holy man Simeon did not reveal anything that Mary and Joseph did not already know from “Revelation and Ancient Promises”. For this we turn once again to Pope John Paul II and his already mentioned 1987 encyclical “Redemptoris Mater”. The Holy Father’s reference to the testimony of the holy man Simeon is yet another guide for us to appreciate Our Lady’s understanding of the “mingling of Revelation and Ancient Promises”. According to St. Luke, the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that Christ would be “a sign of contradiction”, and that a sword of sorrow would pierce the pure and maternal heart of His Mother. Did God use this holy man’s prophecies to reveal to Our Lady something She did not yet know, or did not yet fully understand? Would it be possible, as we have already asked ourselves, that a man would know more about ‘these ancient promises and revelations’ than She who had been chosen by God to use Her free choice to bring them into fruition? This is what Pope John Paul wrote in “Redemptoris Mater” for our information:
“Simeon’s words confirm the Truth of the Annunciation” [16].
Only a truth already known can be confirmed. And - as we have seen - an essential part of “the Truth of the Annunciation” is the Revelation of the Everlasting Enmity God established in the Garden of Eden between ‘the Woman’ and the serpent, and between ‘your’ seed and Her Offspring, as well as the hard struggle, at the centre of which is found, by Her own free choice, the ‘Mother of the Messiah’ as the only and lasting personification of this ‘Woman of Genesis’, the ‘New Eve’. This leaves in clarity nothing to be desired. And as we can appreciate, these were the things talked about between these holy Spouses in their sacred union. Thus we must say: St. Joseph knew. Admittedly not to the extent that it had been given to his wedded Wife to know and understand, but at least to the full comprehension associated with his own calling as well as with the great measure of his holiness.