Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus. 40 days after His birth Mary and Joseph brought Him to the Temple as prescribed by the law of God.         We meet the prophet Simeon who was also a priest in the Temple. Because of the premonition given him by the Holy Spirit he knew he would be able to see the Messiah before he died. Who knows what he thought about that day. I’m sure he probably didn’t wake up that day knowing that he would indeed see the Christ child. His attentiveness to God and the movement of His Spirit in subtle ways led to him recognizing Jesus for who He truly is.

The liturgy of the Word this weekend lets us look to our future, that Jesus is doing everything we have said about him. Jesus started his mission in Galilee, the place where the prophet Isaiah prophesized in the first reading “The people who walked in darkness have seen the great light.” (Is. 9: 2)  Jesus is that great light appearing in the darkest places.  That is the picture of the heavenly kingdom on the day of Salvation. At the last day we will be gathered together under the great light, the presence of God.

Last Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord, which is the official end of the Christmas Season. We are now in this brief period of Ordinary Time, which will last until the coming of Lent and Ash Wednesday.

Last week we celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord; when Christ was made known to the nations. This week we celebrate the the Baptism of the Lord. Today Christ too is made know to the nations. We hear this in the closing line from today’s Gospel, “And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” We see Christ not only was born on Christmas morning, but made himself known to us in many ways, especially as the wise men came in His own Baptism and in His self manifestation at the wedding of Cana.

Today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord. Sometimes referred to as King’s Day, it is traditionally celebrated on January 6th. On this day we celebrate when Jesus’ divinity was publicly manifested to the world. We might be thinking to ourselves, “Didn’t this happen when Jesus was born?” Not exactly. When Jesus was born not too many people knew about it. The only people that knew that Jesus was born was Joseph and Mary, of course, and the shepherds.