The Presentation!
I never appreciated the fourth mystery of the rosary as an encounter between the old and the young. But it is a theme that runs through many of Pope Francis’ homilies on the feast each February 2.
In the Christian East, this feast is called the “Feast of Encounter”: it is the encounter between God, who became a child to bring newness to our world, and an expectant humanity, represented by the elderly man and woman in the Temple.
Joseph and Mary present Jesus in the temple. Two elderly and devout Jews recognize in the infant Jesus the fulfillment of the greatest promise of the ages.
As I read Pope Francis’ homilies for each February 2 celebration I began to see what I had never before seen.
Listen to Francis
… live the encounter between the young (Mary and Joseph) and the old (Simeon and Anna), between observation and prophecy. Let’s not see these as two opposing realities! Let us rather allow the Holy Spirit to animate both of them, and a sign of this is joy.
… This event fulfills the prophecy of Joel: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (2:28). In this encounter, the young see their mission and the elderly realize their dreams. All because, at the center of the encounter, is Jesus.
Generally, it is the young who speak enthusiastically about the future, while the elderly protect the past. In the Gospel, the very opposite occurs, because when we meet one another in the Lord, God’s surprises immediately follow.
For if the young are called to open new doors, the elderly hold the keys. (A religious institute) remains youthful by going back to its roots, by listening to its older members.
There is no future without this encounter between the old and the young. There is no growth without roots and no flowering without new buds. There is never prophecy without memory, or memory without prophecy. And constant encounter.
It’s good for the elderly to communicate their wisdom to the young; and it’s good for the young people to gather this wealth of experience and wisdom, and to carry it forward, not so as to safeguard it in a museum, but to carry it forward addressing the challenges that life brings.
Here it is not young people who are creative: the young, like Mary and Joseph, follow the law of the Lord, the path of obedience. The elderly, like Simeon and Anna, see in the Child the fulfillment of the Law and the promises of God. And they are able to celebrate: they are creative in joy and wisdom. And the Lord turns obedience into wisdom by the working of his Holy Spirit.
Most recently he writes…
Let’s look at Simeon and Anna: even if they are advanced in years, they don’t spend days regretting a past that never comes back, but they open their arms to the future that comes to meet them.
Brothers and sisters, let’s not waste today looking at yesterday, or dreaming of a tomorrow that will never come, but let us place ourselves before the Lord, in adoration, and ask for eyes that know how to see the good and see the ways of God. The Lord will give them to us, if we ask for it. With joy, with fortitude, without fear.
Questions
- Do you experience/model such complimentarity in your encounters?
- Might your own tendency lean more to looking at yesterday… or… dreaming of tomorrow?
Click below for n audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk
It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD to hear from the elderly. I know they have things to say. I want them to talk more. Simeon and Anna are prime examples of those who have things to say that MUST be heard. gh
Father John,
I don’t know where you dig up all those homilies of Pope Francis but I’m glad you do. There is something very creative in culling the wisdom of others into something simple and easy to understand.
I liked this particular phrase of Pope Francis: “not so as to safeguard it in a museum.” That would seem to be a fitting description of the Tridentine Mass. Taking something with only a few cosmetic updates over the course of 500 years and dusting it off to present it to an adoring public as “relevant.”
Larry, I hope you don’t mind me sharing with you excerpts from “Of liturgy and life: Jesuit scholar [Robert F. Taft] reflects on his 46 years in Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 15, 2011:
As for a popular notion that the so-called Tridentine Mass in the Latin rite approaches the Byzantine liturgy’s sense of mystery better than the modern Mass in the vernacular does, Taft said, “Nonsense.”
“The prayers are not for God. God happens to know the whole show already,” he said. “The language is for us, and if you don’t understand the language” — whether in Latin or your native tongue — “then you’ve got a problem.”
“The notion that the language creates the mystery is the height of asininity,” he said.
Also, I find this piece from Pope Francis more telling than the reference to museum:
“Have we been stuck all too long, nestled inside a conventional, external and formal religiosity that no longer warms our hearts and changes our lives? Do our words and our liturgies ignite in people’s hearts a desire to move towards God, or are they a ‘dead language’ that speaks only of itself and to itself? It is sad when a community of believers loses its desire and is content with ‘maintenance’ rather than allowing itself to be startled by Jesus and by the explosive and unsettling joy of the Gospel. It is sad when a priest has closed the door of desire, sad to fall into clerical functionalism, very sad.”