Today we celebrate the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple.
Forty days ago, it was Christmas!
Christmas? Everything seems so far distant.
What was it all about? It was about POVERTY. Yes, poverty.
Around the manger there is very little: hay and straw, a few animals, a poor family and shepherds, little else. Even the Magi, who were certainly of higher social status, fall to their knees not only in adoration but also as a gesture of poverty. Falling to the bare earth, the Magi made themselves small, humble and poor. Old Simeon and the prophetess Anna too were drawn to the Temple by their need of salvation and their poverty of spirit.
It is not possible to be close to this Child without being poor.
Now that Christmas is gone and we are not any longer around the manger, the Shepherds and Magi have all gone back to their country, what can we do?
We can remain ‘poor within’ with that poverty that makes us cry out: “Lord, I am in need; I am in need of forgiveness, in need of help, in need of strength”. We need to overcome any pretence of self-sufficiency in order to understand ourselves to be in need of grace, always in need of this Child in our life.
Even far from Bethlehem there is one way to be close to the Child: poverty, interior poverty, being in need, in need of grace, in need for forgiveness, in need of hope and joy.
From time to time take the temperature of your poverty: how poor are you today? How much in need of salvation? How empty? How interiorly and spiritually poor? How deeply in need of new hope?
Poverty, how precious you are! There is no closest place to Him.
Fr Ivano
