Dear Saint Joseph,
at the beginning of this month of February we came to look for you in Jerusalem. I knew that you would go to the temple to express your gratitude to the Father for your singular fatherhood and the full motherhood of Mary, your wife and to give your firstborn son to divine goodness.
I imagined being there next to old Simeon and the prophetess Anna who were waiting to see the Messiah.
Tomorrow forty days will have passed since the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the law obliges you to present your offering to the temple as a sign of gratitude for the paternity, but also to pay homage to God, recognizing him as the absolute master of life. In your case, God's mastery over your creature is double: he is his son, he is a fragment of eternity made human flesh.
During your wait, dear Saint Joseph, I listened to the feelings of old Simeon; he as a man of faith awaited the event of the birth of the Messiah for the people of Israel. The prolonged and centuries-old night of evil and darkness had sharpened the desire for the coming of the messiah. It is also true that fragments of light appeared every now and then like meteors, but then everything fell into disappointment. I felt in Simeon's words the dismay of the chosen people at seeing themselves governed for over fifty years by a foreign nation. The discomfort and bitterness of the political and social condition became pressing invocations to God to finally send the Messiah to free from the chains of the dominion of the Roman Empire that people whom God had chosen and favored in history to be the sentinel of the presence of the goodness of God merciful to all humanity in need of light.
You, dear Saint Joseph, dreamed, watched and prayed with all the chosen people so that the watchmen of the night would soon announce the coming of the Messiah.
The wait was alive, so much so that the Samaritan woman at the well of Shechem said she had heard about the wait for the Messiah. Peter, already following Jesus for a few months, at the sources of the Jordan River, will recognize him and confess his faith in Jesus-messiah, when Jesus himself asked the group of apostles what the people thought of him and Peter with generous enthusiasm will say: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”
A few months earlier on the banks of the Jordan John the Baptist will indicate him as the Lamb of God who takes away sin from the world.
Dawn had just broken and old Simeon was already in the temple praying, he was reciting the psalms by heart and I could hear in his whisper the words of Psalm 88 "The graces of God I will sing forever with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness from generation to generation…” You, Adonai, have made a covenant with your chosen one, you have sworn allegiance to David and you have established a protection for his descendants and you will build a throne for generation and generation. Justice and justice are the foundations of your throne, my hand will be firm on it and your arm will strengthen it."
The old man's attitude was dignified and the words of the prayer vibrated like fingers on the strings of a harp.
The sun now illuminated the magnificence of the temple in its splendor, individual pilgrims entered in silence, whereas groups entered singing psalms.
At a certain point Simeon turned his back and saw you, or Joseph, entering time next to Mary who was holding Jesus in her arms. The old man's face lit up and moved towards you. As soon as he was next to you his lips opened. to the blessing: the dream of his life had come true and he could now untie the moorings that kept him tied to the earth. His eyes had seen redemption.
Taking Jesus in his arms and raising him to heaven he said: “Now let your servant go in peace, O Lord. My eyes have seen the salvation that you, O God, have prepared for centuries."
Your eyes, dear Giuseppe, were moistened with tears, once again your anxieties, your doubts, the torment of your conscience had received proof that your faith was not in vain and your bride Mary was the virginal flower that God had chosen to marry all humanity in a covenant of eternal love.
There were many parents who on that cold February morning were under the porticoes of the temple waiting for the priests to begin their task of blessing the new first-born creatures and also welcoming an offering of gratitude to God. It was a gift symbolizing gratitude. Joseph and Mary, from the working class, proletarian, had a simple and humble offering as light as the weight of two pigeons, enabled to rise towards heaven to bring to God the creator the song and praise of believers in the merciful goodness of God.
The lanterns that illuminated the path of Jesus' parents towards the Temple and, at the moment of their entry to the threshold of the magnificent temple, a flash of light illuminated the eyes of two elderly people present in the temple for years waiting for a signal for a very important divine intervention.
It was Jesus, the light of the world that shines in the darkness like a warm dawn of light, so while Joseph and Mary advanced hesitantly in those immense spaces the faces of two elderly people lit up and their faces rejoiced and became smiling, they had sensed something extraordinary.
From Bethlehem, the house of bread, to Jerusalem, the house of God.
After the pilgrimage of men to the cave of Bethlehem, comes the pilgrimage of faith of Joseph and Mary to the house of God: the temple of Jerusalem.
After forty days, Mary and Joseph, holding little Jesus in their arms, cross the threshold of the temple to obey the law which prescribed to consecrate their firstborn son to God and to "redeem him" by assuming the burden of religious and human education.
In a usual and usual ceremony in the Temple, on that occasion the profound sense of mystery hovered in the sacred place, which had attracted two characters as sentinels of the future: Simeon and Anna. Two old men who waited to scrutinize, in the face of a firstborn, the features of the Messiah, awaited for centuries.
In the eyes of these two old men, "God, who is everything for every believer and who is beyond our capture, comes to make himself present in a fragment" in the form of a newborn child. And the eyes illuminated by the hope of Simeon and Anna recognize the Messiah and can be satisfied with having lived. Life has found its most awaited satisfaction.
In the simplicity of an act of worship, performed by two young spouses, on a cold February morning, Joseph and Mary come and happen to hear the wisdom of two old men tell about the future of that child.
In this fragment of light, as in a film prologue, the old Simeon announces to the Mother of Jesus the painful path that every mother is called to travel alongside a great Son.
We all know that the suffering of a child has always been present in the heart of a mother.
In the aftermath of the joy of motherhood and the entrustment of this wonderful creature to God, for Mary there is the prophecy of "a sword that will pierce your heart".
On that occasion it was like trampling on the colors of the hope that every mother cultivates in her heart for her child.
That morning Anna wasn't missing either. In fact, for years her eyes had been waiting for a fragment of light to shine on the face of a firstborn brought to the Temple by a young married couple.
On that occasion, a strong emotion shone through everyone's faces: it was the fruit of their love which was symbolically returned to God as a sign of gratitude and was given back by God to perpetuate the name of the family in the history of a people.
Joseph and Mary's trepidation revealed something singular. Anna, with the sensitivity of a woman enlightened by faith, sees in that Child the splendor of the divine dwelling and pushes her intuition to "speak about that Child to all those who were waiting for the liberation of Jerusalem".
Anna's speaking «to all those who waited» seems to suggest an interesting observation and the testimony of an Orthodox theologian when he states that «it is not knowledge that illuminates the mystery, but it is the mystery that illuminates knowledge [as the case of Anna in the Temple] we can only know through things that we will never know in a total way", as is precisely the infinite mystery of God.
The gospel states that Mary not only had these events imprinted in her mind, but "kept them in her heart by meditating on them". Meditating means digging into the facts…
For this reason, the very heart of the Madonna becomes the womb of God's light to intuit and grasp the seeds of the mystery and embody them in daily life with the wisdom and knowledge that God offers us through faith.
The presentation of Jesus at the Temple is an episode that sheds light on the future, lights up hope in the company of Jesus on the journey of our life and nourishes the pilgrimage of our existence with optimism. Christian optimism is born from God's faithfulness to his pact of faithful and eternal alliance sealed with the seal of the blood of the Cross.
On Calvary, Simon's prophecy for the Mother of Jesus came true: the great love of the son of God who tears up the promissory note of our debt towards the Creator.
On that day on Calvary the light darkened, but to give rise to a new light and it is in that light that Simeon can say: «Now let, O Lord, let your servant go in peace because my eyes have seen your salvation ».
It was the light with which he could finally enter the messianic era, enter that day without sunset, illuminated by an eternal light that attested to him that God's promises have come true.