The Presentation of the Lord

Everybody hates meetings. In the world of business, where meetings are unavoidable, only 9 percent of managers say that something was accomplished in all ten of the last meetings they attended. Managers and executives say that 45 percent of the meetings they attend accomplish nothing. And those are the people who call the meetings. The legendary librarian of the American seminary in Rome used to say, “Meetings are where minutes are kept, and hours are wasted. By the way, the parish staff meeting is this Tuesday at 1 p.m.

If you hate meetings, you are in trouble today. Because today’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord originally had a different name: Hypapante, which is Greek for...”meeting.” We can see why. The infant Christ and His Mother meet Simeon and Anna in the Temple. And there is more. Simeon has been waiting all his life to meet the Messiah, the Christ of the Lord. He represents all the prophets and faithful people of the Old Testament who waited for the day when the Messiah would appear in the Temple. Now that he has met him, he can go in peace. The Old Testament has met the New Testament. Waiting meets reality. Expectation meets fulfillment.

Meeting the Messiah is the beginning and end of the Christian life. How many people have experienced a dramatic change of the their whole life because they met Christ! The most obvious example in the New Testament is Saul of Tarsus. He thought that Christians were the enemy of everything he believed. Then he met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. It changed everything. Later, he was able to say, "for me, life is Christ, and death is gain." . . As he thought of death, he said, “we would rather go home, and be with the Lord.” Between the two meetings of baptism and death, if we are to remain good and faithful Christians, we have to meet the Lord again and again. In prayer, in His word, in the Mass, in all the sacraments, in the poor, the lonely, the imprisoned, the sick, and the sorrowful.

There are things that make it difficult to have a good meeting with the Lord. They are not so different from the reasons that many people hate meetings. According to one professional study, here are the most common problems with meetings:
1. People protecting turf
2. 1 or 2 people dominate
3. Defensiveness
4. Internal politics
5. People not prepared
(Top executives in America report that 48% of meetings don’t even start on time.)

These problems are not so different from the reasons we don't have good meetings with the Lord.
1. People protecting turf
In the Psalm of the Mass, we sang: Lift up, O gates, your lintels; reach up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may come in! This is not protecting turf, but opening doors. To meet Christ, we have to stop thinking of our lives as our own turf. We need to let Christ in. Pope Benedict put it this way: “If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? ...Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? . . . No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. ... Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide.... Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.”

2. 1 or 2 people dominate
Simeon and Anna were very important people in the Temple. They had seniority. But they understood that the most important people who had ever entered the Temple were Jesus and Mary.

3. Defensiveness
The defensive person closes himself to the other person’s ideas or point of view. A two-way conversation is impossible. The defensive person can’t acknowledge mistakes, or take responsibility for them. It’s someone else’s problem. Finally, defensiveness prevents us from putting the other person’s needs above our own. In the Christian life, defensiveness takes the form of a denial of sin -- at least, the denial of my sins. Other people seem to have lots of them.
Pope Pius XII: "The greatest sin today is that men have lost the sense of sin.”

4. Internal politics
Christianity is not an individual proposition. Anyone who wants to belong to Christ has to understand that the whole body of Christ is included in the deal.
Last week, in a daily Mass homily, Pope Francis talked about this reality: "The Christian is not a baptized person who receives baptism and then goes on his way. The first fruit of baptism is to make you belong to the Church, the People of God. You cannot understand a Christian without the Church. This is why [Pope] Paul VI said that it is an absurd dichotomy to love Christ without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church.... It's not possible. ... We receive the Gospel message in the Church and we live out our holiness in the Church...”

5. People not prepared
The ultimate meeting with the Messiah happens when we die. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to show up to that meeting well-prepared? In the ancient litany of the saints, the Church teaches us to pray: "From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord." Every time we say the Hail Mary, we ask the Mother of God to intercede for us "at the hour of our death." Catholics are encouraged to entrust themselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death (cf. CCC 1014).
We prepare for this final meeting every day. We prepare for it, not by the way we will die at some future time, but by the way we are living right now.

Today we bless candles. In the seventh century, St Sophronius spoke of these candles: “Our candles also show how bright our souls should be when we go to meet Christ.
The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him....
we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us hasten all together to meet our God.