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Early yesterday
morning, members from seven families gathered at the Kennedy Space
Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida for what they believed would be a
joyous and warm welcome home for the seven astronauts of the space
shuttle Columbia. Just as other astronaut’s family members had
experienced at more than one hundred previously flawless space shuttle
landings, the family members gathered at Cape Canaveral yesterday were
filled with feelings of anxious anticipation as they watched and waited
for the shuttle’s appearance on the western horizon around 9:10 a.m.
Their hearts undoubtedly swelled with love and pride as well as with
high hopes for a safe return to earth of their beloved.
As we sadly all know
now, that just wasn’t going to be. Somewhere over western Texas,
hurtled by the forces of gravity at more than 12,000 miles per hour and
more than 200,000 feet high in the sky, the doomed space shuttle
Columbia exploded, killing the seven astronauts aboard. When
confirmation of this tragedy reached the Kennedy Space Center, NASA
personnel quickly transported the astronauts’ family members from the
tarmac where they were to greet their beloved to a meeting room where,
presumably, the NASA personnel informed the family members in private
about the tragic and very sad news.
Any one of us who
has anxiously anticipated a crucial event—whether
in our own lives or in the life of a beloved—and
have experienced our love, our pride, and our hope evaporate within a
blink of an eye, can identify with the dark feelings of grief as well
and the deep feelings of sadness and loss that certainly filled the
hearts and pierced into the souls of the astronauts’ family members
following the aftermath of yesterday’s tragedy. We may say something
like “My heart goes out to you,” “I’m so sorry, you and your family are
in my prayers,” “I pray that they now rest in God’s hands,” to express
our solidarity. But, we all know that our words do not adequately
express the depth and extent of what we feel.
When tragedy strikes
from out of the blue as it did with yesterday’s Columbia
explosion—what
was supposed to be just another routine space shuttle landing on a very
beautiful Saturday morning—it’s
so very easy to become cynical and to reflect upon people and events
with our mind not seeking to understand where true happiness is to be
found but, rather, with our mind wanting to revel in what is making us
unhappy, oftentimes to the point that we convince ourselves that life
really is like a Russian novel or movie where there never is a happy
ending. And, indeed, we cannot escape the fact that, for all of us,
death is the final, if not tragic, end to every human story.
When tragedy strikes
from out of the blue, it’s so very easy to allow our vision to become
jaundiced, to the point that we look at people and events not with clear
eyes buoyed by Christian optimism and hope, but with eyes beclouded by
evil’s cataracts of pessimism and despair. And, I think it is very fair
to say, the closer that tragedy strikes to home, the harder it is to
resist the cynicism that attempts to seize our thoughts, the pessimism
that attempts to darken our vision, and the arrow of tragedy that
pierces so deeply into our hearts.
Cancer may strike a
middle schooler’s parent. One’s child may be killed in a car accident
only a couple hours after having said, “Have fun tonight, honey.
Be careful. Make sure that you’re home by midnight.” A heart attack
may claim one’s spouse at work when one didn’t even have the time to say
“Goodbye, see you tonight” earlier that morning. This is the stuff of
tragedy that so easily can transform hoped-for happy endings filled with
optimism into pessimistic nightmares filled with despair. Where once
there seemed to be so much light, tragedy shrouds the days, weeks,
months, years, and decades with darkness.
As sad as
yesterday’s events truly are, today’s gospel presents a faith-filled
counterpoint to stories of tragedy like yesterday’s Columbia
explosion.
For decades, a
faithful Jewish man by the name of Simeon—a
man reputed among the Jewish people to be righteous and devout—longed
with all of his heart to live long enough to see the Messiah. Having
lived as a slave under the oppression of Roman tyranny for his entire
life, Simeon longed for the day when the Messiah would be born,
presented in the Temple, mature in grace and wisdom, rise up to free the
Jewish people from the bonds of slavery and oppression and, then, lead
the Jewish people to experience anew life in the Promised Land. So
sincere and fervent was Simeon in his hope, we are told in today’s
gospel, that the Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon how, before breathing his
last, God would answer Simeon’s decades-old prayer. He would live to
see God’s anointed Son, Christ the Lord.
Whereas the tragedy
of oppression had extinguished the hope and darkened the minds of many
of Simeon’s co-religionists to the point that they became cynical and
sought their happiness not in God’s promises but by making
accommodations with their oppressors, Roman rule did not darken Simeon’s
eyes with the cataracts of pessimism and despair. Instead, Simeon
trusted in God’s promise, allowing his eyes to be enlightened by the
sure hope afforded by faith. Some of Simeon's co-religionists
surely thought him odd, an old codger who hung around church all of the
time and never was willing to adopt a realistic look at how things were
and would remain for the Jews.
And so it was that,
after a lifetime of trusting in God’s promise, a husband and wife
journeyed from Nazareth in Galilee and came one Sabbath day to the
Temple to present their first-born so that he could be consecrated to
God according to the law. What the aged man of faith beheld was
not simply another baby boy. No, in this infant Simeon saw the light of
God—the
fulfillment of Simeon’s longing—just
as God had promised. And, as Simeon held the infant, prayed:
Now, Master, you
may let your servant go in peace according to your word, for my eyes
have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of al the
peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your
people Israel.
As thankful as
Simeon was that God had answered his prayer and as joyous as Mary and
Joseph were after they had presented Jesus at the Temple that Sabbath,
we must not forget that Simeon uttered an ominous prophecy to Mary and
to all of those who would see in her son the “Light from Light, True God
from True God.” Simeon said:
Behold, this
child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a
sign that will be contradicted—and
you yourself a sword will pierce—so
that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
Simply stated,
tragedy would not cease to be present in the world because the Messiah
had come. Instead, Simeon prophesied, tragedy would strike even closer
to home.
The Feast of the
Presentation provides people of faith a moment to recall not only that
Simeon welcomed Jesus into the Temple, recognized Jesus as the Messiah,
took Jesus into his arms, and gave thanks to God because the infant he
held in his arms was the light of the world, the world that was living
in great darkness because people did not trust in God’s promise. The
Feast of the Presentation also offers people of faith a moment to
welcome Jesus into the temple of their lives, to recognize Jesus as the
light who enlightens them, to take Jesus into their arms, and to give
thanks to God the Father for sending His Son, the Messiah, even as the
tragedies of sin and death visit people of faith.
When a tragedy
suddenly enters into our lives and threatens to darken our
consciousness, when the cataracts of cynicism and pessimism threaten to
blind our sight, and when grief and sadness threaten to rend our souls,
the existential question posed by the Feast of the Presentation to
people of faith is: “Do we—like
Simeon—trust
in God’s promise?”
Tragedy never discriminates. Sadly, it visits everyone, including Mary, the
mother of Jesus. And, it pierces deeply into the heart, just as Simeon
prophesied. But, for people of faith who see in Mary’s son the “Light
from Light”—the
light Simeon said was destined for the rise and fall of many and a sign
that would be contradicted—the
resurrection of the “True God from True God” has emerged triumphant
through his death on the Cross. As the Letter to the Hebrews
reminded us: “Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he
is able to help those who are being tested.”
In the middle of
the sadness and grief that follows in the wake of a tragedy, this is the good news that is intended to strengthen
people of faith. Unlike Simeon, we no longer need to hope in God’s
promise. No, in sending His only Son, God already has fulfilled
His promise. In the end, evil will not trump the resurrection of the
dead and life in the world to come. Discipleship requires that we
witness to Christian optimism and hope amidst the pessimism and despair caused by the
tragedies that surround us. In this way, we continue the saving
work of Christ whose Spirit is at work within us. |
HOMILY
