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Title: Childlikeness and Presentation of the Lord on February 2. Regarding Luke 2:22-40
[__00_] Today is the presentation of the Lord exactly
40 days after Christmas.
And it's not just that Jesus is presented to
the temple so that the people can keep an eye on him there, Yes, Joseph and
Mary, keep an eye on him at the temple.
This is not just about the introduction of Jesus
to us, but an invitation to the imitation of Christ by all of us.
We are called to imitate Jesus's childlike
simplicity and also his sacrifice. We
are called to imitate our children, to heed their call which is, very often, God’s
call.
[__01_] Starting
around the year 2010, I traveled on one of several Catholic mission and service
trips with Seton Hall University students to Haiti for a mission trip to an
orphanage in central Haiti, about 4 hours from Port au Prince.
I was a chaplain to the group. One of
our projects was to visit a hospital and refuge for both children and adults
who did not have other family members to care for them. This hospital was run by
the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
It was both a joy and struggle to
emulate the service of these generous sisters. The young children were eager
for attention, just to be taken out of their cribs for human contact was a gift
to them.
[__02_] I bring this up in reference to the Gospel
Good News of Jesus’ contact with us and his commitment to our salvation on this
Sunday of the Presentation of the Lord.
For the first time, by Joseph and
Mary, the infant Jesus is brought into physical contact with Temple worshipers
and with Temple authorities. For now, the Temple authorities are treating him
gently.
But,
the commitment of Jesus – as sacrificial lamb (??? Better term or identifier??)
– is being revealed.
The earth was starting to receive her
king, though this is being revealed very gradually in the person of an infant
in this royal and holy family.
Is there not something consoling in
that our salvation began in the conception and birth of Jesus Christ? Even in
one so small, an infant, the full power of God’s love is present.
But, do we not experience love –
powerful and effective through contact with children?
[__03_] When I was at the orphanage, I was reminded
that love and beauty were present in the body and soul of every child.
And, this particularly emphasized to
me through a child for whom we celebrated Baptism. (More on this later..should I bother to mention this now???)
As we approached the orphanage each
day, we knew it would be a few hours of intense child care with children who
craved individual attention.
Regardless of what kind of day each of
us was having, regardless of what preoccupations we might have, these children
needed our attention.
They called for love to come out of
us, whether we had planned it or not.
How many of you as parents and
caregivers – how many times have you been called by a child – by your children/
young people – in a similar way, that you have been called to love not based on
a prior or planned intention, but just
based on powerful instinct that draws you to love your child, or to love children?
[__04_] In a sermon called the State of Innocence (https://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume5/sermon8.html)
John
Henry Newman writes about our hope of salvation and reminds of Jesus’ calling
to us to become as little children, to be childlike.
Newman is connecting the virtue of the
child to the virtue of Adam, the first man and first human creature in the
Garden of Eden in Genesis and compares this to our own infancy and childhood as
follows:
(a) SOLITUDE – Adam is created in the Garden of Eden and has no companions but
also does not see a problem with being alone. As children, did we not REVEL in “alone
time” in a way that we don’t as adults. We could be alone as long as we were
safe.
(b)
HIDDENNESS/CONCEALMENT
The
life of Adam in the Garden is hidden and concealed. We don’t really know what
it was like to live before original sin, before the fall.
Similarly,
your infancy and my earliest childhood
experiences are not saved on the “hard drive in our heads.” We have no memory
of them.
Example:
When I was 11 months old, my mother took me on a trip to visit her best friend
in Puerto Rico. It must have been
exciting for me to fly on a plane for the first time and I always enjoyed
spending time with my mother. I have no recollection of this
(c)
TRUST /DEPENDENCY – children are not saved by their faith and actions, rather
by God’s grace and this applies to us as grown-ups.
But,
as grown-ups, we may lose this sense of dependency and imagine ourselves more
powerful than we are.
[__05_] As
children, we learn how to live and thrive in solitude, in hiddenness and in
dependency on our parents and caregivers.
In this regard, we as children
imitated the solitude of Jesus, and imitated the hiddenness of his life from
public view and his dependency being in communion with our Father in heaven
[__06_] As we grow up, we forget or dismiss these
virtues and regard them as “childish”.
But, being childlike is not being
childish.
[__07_] What a child does differently from an
adult is that a child does not act out of “intellect” or “logical reason” or
“self discipline”.
Rather the child responds because the
Holy Spirit is in him or her.
Newman: “There is no calculation, no
struggle, no self-regard, no investigation of motives. We act from love. Hence:
[St. Paul wrote]: "Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said,
I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”
(2 Corinthians 6:16)
The child acts out of love.
[__08_] On
one of our Haiti trips, I was introduced at the hospital to a young child with
serious health issues.
The sisters asked me if I would come
back the next day and baptize the child. Our Seton Hall group and I returned
the next day for this purpose.
One of the college students was very
moved by this and also had his mind changed about the meaning of a sacrament
whose official definition is an “outward or external sign of an interior
reality”.
This student was well aware of and
thought Baptism was all about outward signs not just the water being poured,
but also the outfits, the balloons, the cake, the party, the photography.
Don’t get me wrong: all of the above
are good for celebrating you child’s baptism. Yet they are not the essential
and do not capture the essential and inherent beauty of you or you as a child.
I pray that all of us – through Jesus
Christ- on this Presentation Day, this 40th day after Christmas,
that we can recognize and comprehend our own calling can lead us to better
disciplines, actions, decisions.
However, our calling in Christ is not
based on our own action but rather recognizing that every person – young and
old – has value in our world, in our nation, in our family, in our town and
that this value is not changed by status
or sickness or wealth or poverty.
