A lesson of obedience and humility

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT’S what we can gather from the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. Imagine Christ, the very son of God, submitting himself to some ritual when it would have been unnecessary for him.

Obviously, the child Jesus could be exempted from this law, and we can suppose that both Mary and Joseph would know this. Still, they proceeded to follow the law, giving us the precious lesson that like them, we should try to behave like any ordinary person, following the just laws and customs of the time and place, and choosing to forgo certain privileges that we may have. That’s humility in action.

That’s how we should behave. We may be quite privileged in life because of the many gifts and other endowments God and others may have given us, but we should never feel entitled to anything. Instead, our attitude toward these privileges should be one of willingness to serve more, doing a lot of good while passing unnoticed, and all for the glory of God and for the good of all.

It is something worth emulating, since this is a clear expression of humility, an indispensable virtue that would enable us to stick with God and his will and ways. We have to be most wary when we happen to enjoy some privileged positions or status in life because we tend to think that we deserve more entitlements. And not only would we expect them. We may even demand them for us. Without this humility, we in the end would separate ourselves from God.

Let’s be reminded that whatever privileges, favors and blessings we may enjoy in life are meant for us to strengthen our desire to serve God and others, and not to be served. But as it is, we should try to avoid them, since they tend only to spoil and corrupt us. Rather, we should try to follow what Christ himself once said—that we enter by the narrow gate instead of preferring the wide gate and the broad road that can only lead us to our destruction. (cfr. Mt 7,13-14)

This is also the example of Christ himself who, as St. Paul noted in one of his epistles, being God emptied himself to become man and went all the way to offering his life for all our sins. (cfr. Phil 2,7) This was also shown when Christ went ahead to pay temple tax when he obviously would have been exempted from it. (cfr. Mt 17,24-27) Seemingly impossible for us to do, we should just try our best to imitate that example, relying on God’s grace and on our all-out effort.

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord also reminds us that we have to give not only the best that we have to God first, but also everything that we have. We have to remember that our life ought to be spent as an offering. It has to be lived as a gift, because it is first of all a gift also from God to us. This is a fundamental attitude to develop toward our life, because absent that, we would have a gravely handicapped understanding of life, prone to all sorts of anomalies.

The feast of the Presentation of the Lord can also be considered as another epiphany, another manifestation of Christ as our savior. This time, the manifestation is done not to the three magi anymore, but to two characters, Simeon and Anna.

The feast is a good reminder to all of us, Christian believers, that we have a duty to present Christ to everyone as he truly is to us—the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our humanity that has been damaged by sin.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com