The second readings take a brief break from 1 Corinthians this week for a reading from Hebrews as we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation. This feast has become particularly close to my heart in the past several years. As my wife and I wrestle with raising a young family and with trying to pass on a living faith to them, this feast is a welcome glimpse into the Holy Family’s own religious practices. The struggles and the glorious moments are intertwined in this event from Jesus’ family life as they are in all our families’ lives.
This feast also has further personal significance for me. Six years ago, my mother died just before Christmas. She belonged to numerous associations that prayed for her and our family at special times throughout the year, and I contacted them all to let them know she had died. One of them was the Universal Living Rosary Association of Saint Philomena, which organizes people who commit to praying just one decade of the rosary every day so that together with others around the world many full rosaries are prayed each day. When I called, I told them I would be honored to take over my mother’s decade. Since that day I have prayed (most days) the Fourth Joyful Mystery, the Presentation of the Lord, in honor of my mother, the person who taught me first and most about Jesus.
The struggles and the glorious moments are always mixed together this side of Heaven. That is what this second reading from Hebrews is getting at. Jesus became fully human. He shared in the blood and the flesh. He was a true biological child of a human mother named Mary. Jesus was tested through what he suffered, not just on the cross but also in the daily grind that is life in this world. After this event, the Gospels are nearly completely silent on Jesus’ life for thirty years, time spent learning and failing and growing.
This is what is so utterly unique about Jesus of Nazareth. He is completely and fully human, and yet completely and fully God. In his own person, Jesus brought God into all the ordinary things of life: pregnancy and childbirth, family religious practices, poverty, friendship, puberty, work, seeing friends go away. He experienced all of it! As a fully human person, Jesus could offer to God the Father what none of us completely offers: our unreserved freedom, even our very lives. And as God, his unreserved freedom and his very life are of infinite value. Because Jesus is fully God and fully man, his death can count for me, and for my mom, and for you.
Why did Jesus die? So that we don’t have to be afraid of death anymore.