“Is the Lord presented in your life? Is the Lord presented in your life? Do you see him? Do you recognize him? Just in your everyday life, do you see the Lord in your life? Maybe that’s a question to ask ourselves every night, every night before we go to sleep. Where have I seen the Lord today? You see, in the breviary that the religious and priests pray in our night prayer we have this same prayer as Simeon said in our Gospel today. ‘Lord, now your servant can go in peace. Your Word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord, the light to the nations.’ It says. So, for us to pray that we’re supposed to see where has the Lord presented to us in our day reflecting on our day, but now I ask you especially on this feast of the Presentation of the Lord, do you know when the Lord presented to you in your life? Can you see him?
In the first reading of Malachi it talks about how the Lord would be presented to us one day. It talks about a fiery furnace. The Holy Spirit was upon Simeon in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit is upon us. When Jesus resurrected from the dead he said, ‘The Spirit will come and teach you everything.’ All of us have been baptized meaning the Holy Spirit is with us and confirmed, but are we listening to it? Can we see it? Do we notice the movement of the Holy Spirit in our life because until we do then we won’t see the Lord. We won’t see God in our life, but how do we see him? How do we see the movement of the Spirit? Again I said in the first reading of Malachi it talks about this fiery furnace. Often times the spirit of the Lord is like a fiery furnace. Sometimes it can be painful. Sometimes it can be lightning, but just like a fiery furnace what happens when you melt down metals of gold or silver? When you have a melting of metals in breaks it all down, but then the impurities come to the top where you can scrape away the impurities and in some ways that’s what’s happening to us in our life, but only if we are open to it that the Holy Spirit guides us, let’s us see, but then it’s our choice to receive it or not. Will we let the Holy Spirit guide us in our life, today to see the Lord today? It might not always be pleasant, but know that just like a fiery furnace it’s helping purify our hearts so that the impurities will float to the top and we can bring it to confession and it will be wiped away. Today we celebrate the presentation of the Lord because he is a light to the nations. He is a light to us and the Holy Spirit is always guiding us towards him, but my question to you again is, can you see him? Are you open to seeing him?
As you come before the Lord today where Christ is truly present before you in the Eucharist let us continue to ask the Lord for the strength and the courage to come to him with our struggles our impurities our sins and ask him to reveal himself to us in whatever it is in our life so that one day like Simeon we can praise the Lord that he is in our lives. Amen.”