Today is in multiple Christian calendars, particularly the Catholic one, the feast of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple. As one of the earliest revelations of Christ’s divinity, it was a monumental event in salvation history and included a prophecy of the crucifixion to come. And its message is beautifully expressed in an old Irish hymn.
The feast of the Presentation, also called the Purification of Mary (the Jewish law required both the consecration of the new child and the ritual cleansing of the mother), remains an important feast in the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic liturgies, and in the traditional Roman Catholic calendar, marks the end of the Christmas season. Anglicans retained the feast also under the English title of “Candlemas,” as the feast traditionally involves the lighting of candles and sometimes processions to represent the fact that Jesus is the light of the world. The association of this feast day with light and illumination, both material and spiritual, leads directly into my point about Biblical revelations of Christ as God — and the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.”
The Presentation is what many Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox call a “Theophany,” which in Greek literally means an appearance of God. Since Jesus Christ was fully God and man, technically, wherever He went and whatever He did, those who saw Him and heard Him and interacted with Him were experiencing a Theophany. But to make it very clear that He was divine and not merely a very holy human, there are particular points in Christ’s life when God the Father, either directly or through a prophet like Simeon or John the Baptist, reveals Christ’s identity in a special and poignant way.
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That is what we witness in Luke 2:22ff:
And after the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord: As it is written in the law of the Lord…
[Simeon] also took [Jesus] into his arms, and blessed God, and said: Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace; Because my eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel…[he] said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.
The passage also mentions “one Anna, a prophetess,” who recognized the savior and spread the good news of His birth to others.
Simeon and Anna both recognized in the tiny baby the God-man Who would save all mankind from sin and death. Soon, mothers would no longer need the symbolic purification of the old law, because the purification of the new law through baptism and the merits of Christ’s death would be much more efficacious. And therefore Simeon was warning Mary about the unspeakable heartbreak she would suffer as she watched her Son die amid the jeers and hatred of the very people He was redeeming. The revelation of Christ was one mixed equally of joy and sorrow, because He came to die.
Since the days of Simeon and Anna, billions of people have encountered Christ and had their own theophanies, many of them through this story and the other accounts of Christ’s life in the Scriptures. Talented poets and hymnists wrote canticles of praise as beautiful as the one Simeon recited. Among them was St. Dallán Forgaill, a 6th-century Irish monk, bard, and martyr, very important in early Irish literature and most remembered today for writing the Gaelic poem we know as “Be Thou My Vision.”There is an especial beauty in the hymn when one understands that Dallán was blind. For him, the only vision was that of the soul, the spiritual sight illuminated by God’s grace. Dallán might not have been able to see the flames of the candles at church for the Presentation or any other feast, but like Simeon, his most profound insights came from Heaven. As you listen to Dallán’s hymn today, remember that Jesus is the light of the world and that He is a revelation to the Gentiles, the glory of Israel, and the Redeemer Who is waiting to transform each of our lives.
