CHRIST REJOICES TO COME TO US

Each year, the length of the postfeast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple changes on account of the service of the Lenten Triodion.  This year, we will celebrate this feast for only four days, so as to conclude the feast on the Friday before the 1^st Saturday of the Departed.  However, we are fortunate that we have the opportunity to meditate on this joyful feast together with the Sunday of the Prodigal Son—the Second Sunday of the Lenten Triodion, because this parable about the Prodigal Son—today’s Gospel reading—describes the person, who abandons God, the Father, and wanders in sin, and then by the grace of God, returns to the Father.  The same parable also illustrates the manner in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came forth from the Father in order to take on the likeness of our sinful nature, and reconciling us to the Father, He returned to the Father’s Heavenly Throne.  In the Mystery of the Incarnation, He accepts the likeness of the human being, who wanders in the darkness of sin, even though He Himself never committed sin.

     The feast of the Presentation of the Lord reminds us that we human beings are historical beings.  We understand everything by means of timelines and dates, and we also try to understand God’s Mysteries by this same method.  But, the Holy Mysteries are eternal, and when we say this, we mean more than they will endure forever, with everlasting duration in time.  Instead of this, we mean that God exists now, always now, in an everlasting present moment.  Therefore, the Holy Mysteries, which accomplish our salvation are present in all their parts.  Perhaps we have noticed that many times during the liturgical year, we begin the dismissal of our divine services with the words “ Christ our true God… for the sake of our salvation,” for example “Christ our true God, who was born in a cave in Bethlehem of Judea and lay in a manger for our salvation,” or “Who, in accord with the Law, accepted circumcision on the eighth day for our salvation,” or “Who willed to be carried in the arms of the righteous Simeon for our salvation.” Well, which of these things accomplished our salvation? All of them, and the fullness of salvation is present in every one, just as in the body every cell contains all the genetic material of the entire organism.

     During the postfeast of the Presentation, on the 4^th day of February, we commemorate our venerable father St. Isidore of Pelusium.  St. Isidore wrote thousands of letters, in which he explained the Holy Mysteries of Christ.  In these letters, he elaborated the words, which the Holy Apostle Paul uttered regarding the Mysteries, namely that Jesus Christ is Priest, the Altar and the Lamb of Sacrifice, and he explained that in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, our altar is the mystical Bethlehem, the mystical Golgotha and the mystical, life-giving Tomb of the Lord.  St. Isidore tells us that the clothes and veils, which we use to cover the holy gifts, represent the clothes wherein the Lord Jesus was swaddled.  From our altar—the mystical cave of Bethlehem, we receive the true Christ, the King of All, just as St. Simeon received Christ into his arms, when Christ was borne from the cave of Bethlehem to the Holy Temple.  Why would Christ our God want to come to us, and why would he have wanted to rest in the arms of St. Simeon? It is His delight to be with human beings, as the Book of Proverbs tells us.

     During the period between the Nativity of Christ and the Presentation of the Lord, we meditated on our most precious treasure—our dear Child Jesus, Who came forth from the Father to the poor, humble cave of Bethlehem in order to save us.  But, what is God’s most precious treasure? It is His Image—the human being.  God has no love for humanity.  No, His immeasurable love is for each, individual human being.  It is the same love with which He loved Adam, and now, most importantly, it is the same love with which God the Father loves His Only-Begotten Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  In Christ, each of us becomes the Prodigal Son, the heir of the Father’s Heavenly Throne.

     Sinful humanity has a strong preference for elaborate, mighty and impressive governmental systems, but God cares about the good of His image.  Naturally, He recognizes that governments must exist for the welfare of individual human beings, but human beings make governments, while God created the human being.  A government must never take away what belongs to the human being without a just reason.  In fact, according to the traditional moral teaching of the Church, the family should never do what the individual human being is able to do (when the family does what the individual is able to do, we end up with lazy people), and an association of any kind should never do what the family is able to do; and also, the local government should never do what an association is able to do, and so on all the way up to the highest levers of the central, national government.  This moral teaching is called “the principle of subsidiarity,” because all of these other human structures were made by human beings in order to assist the family and the individual human being, which were created by God.

     Individually, each human being has a personal relationship with God, and, in Christ, we take part in the relationship that the Father has with His Only-Begotten Son.  Each of us is beloved, just like St. Simeon.  Christ rejoices to come to us.  Let us be attentive, for indeed He comes to us, in order to rest in us, just as He rested in the arms of St. Simeon.  He comes from our Holy Altar as from the Cave of Bethlehem to the Holy Temple; He makes each Christian soul to be His Holy Temple—a special place, wherein He can dwell.  Let us pray that soon He will dwell in all human beings in the very same way.  Be welcome, O Salvation that God prepared before the face of all peoples. Be welcome, Light of revelation for the nations, and Glory for us—Your People.