For Sunday
Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
Collect
Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
Jesus’s visit to the temple is auspicious, amazing even. Simeon is guided by the Holy Spirit as Jesus will be after his baptism. The pronouncement of Jesus’s destiny is resonant with Mary’s own revelation years before in the Magnificat. Anna, the prophet, responds as Zechariah did to God’s miracle in giving him a son in John the Baptist at the beginning of the story — and how the disciples will respond to the resurrection at the end of the story.
Here, at the temple, we don’t just have prophecy as the prediction of the future, we have prophecy as the love and generous transformative grace of God that is intended for the people. And we are offered grace in receiving it now.