Today’s readings: Malachi 3,1-4; Hebrews 2,14-18; Luke 2,22-32.

What is most remarkable in today’s gospel narrative is how the fragility of the child Jesus being presented in the temple triggers through the eyes of Simeon a very deep revelation of God. Simeon was a mystic and a prophet, seeing what others were not seeing, not even Joseph and Mary.

In this feast of the Presentation of the Lord, the focus is not so much on Jesus but rather on Simeon. Rather than salvation, what the Scriptures accentuate is the right attitude to receive it and experience it. This is what Simeon represents in his longing for Israel’s consolation. The revelation of a fragile Jesus triggers his canticle, which declares the closing of the Old Testament and points to the beyond.

In the spiritual life, we normally speak of feeling safe in God’s arms. Here we have God Himself feeling safe in the arms of Simeon, who lived to see this moment. This should make us ask important questions: Is God safe with us in the culture we live in and in the world we inhabit? Is our religion, or the way we celebrate our faith, creating the sacred space needed where God can really manifest Himself?

The reading from the prophet Malachi fits in squarely with these questions. Malachi is interpreting Israel’s feelings at a difficult moment after Judah returned from its exile in Babylon. The people and their leaders were not strong enough to rise to the situation. Malachi was passionate about the temple and its rituals and speaks of something new, an unexpected visit by the Lord.

After the exilic experience, Israel’s religion became tiring. This was not the case with Simeon, who had so long been expecting the right moment, and when it finally came he was so vibrant with enthusiasm and joy that he cried: “Let your servant now go in peace”.

The heart of the mystery of the religion of Jesus is the capacity to wait, which arises from our deepest need to be saved and healed. Basically we are all fragile, we all have our disabilities, we all long to belong.

But this is where openness to the true God can make all the difference. There are those who deeply connect with their inner disability, and in their fragility see God, and those who instead, seek to protect themselves behind an inflated self-image which ultimately is a distortion of the truth.

It is always in fragility that Jesus reveals himself. He places himself in men’s hands and becomes exposed to whatever they will do. It was his whole human life, including his death predicted in Simeon’s words, which was presented as a sign that in him, death was to be conquered.

Today’s reading from Hebrews, which is pivotal to our Christian faith, figures prominently in the book Raising Abel by James Alison. “The marks of Jesus’ death were something like trophies,” he writes.

The likeness of Jesus to all humans highlighted in Hebrews has a double function, according to Alison. On the one hand it allows Jesus to be a mediator with compassion. On the other hand, it reveals his divine character in fragility, in his similarity to humans.

In the world as it is, we experience fragility and vulnerability all the time in those who land on our shores in search of a more valued life, in those who lack dignity and respect due to domestic violence or discrimination or abuse in its varied forms. These all come to us fragile, and what they would expect from us is not a strong and powerful Jesus or a religion that can argue convincingly. It’s all about true solidarity and justice out of love.

Like Israel, weary from its exilic experience yet invited by Malachi to expect the unexpected, and like Simeon, rooted in the certainty of seeing salvation, we need the alertness to have the eyes to see God’s mercy and love showered on today’s world and people. God is tradition. But he is also innovation.

God is new each moment, and to those who believe in divine love, He gives assurance that the way of love is not a hopeless one. The “refiner’s fire” of which Malachi speaks, may be read in terms of doomsday. But it’s more an impulse, a creative energy coming from God enabling us to see the unseen, to sense hope even in darkness.