The laws of purification in the Old Testament prescribe that after a woman gives birth to a first-born son, she withdraws for purification, a quarantine. The Gospel today follows yesterday’s: Joseph and Mary present Jesus in the temple. They met Simeon, then Anna, an old prophetess, who “never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer…” She had years of waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem, looking backward and forward in faith and hope. Mary and Joseph then returned to Nazareth, and Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom: and the favour of God was upon Him.” His parents treasured these memories as Jesus learned about His past and he, too, looked forward to the redemption of Israel.
Jesus spent most of His life discovering (better uncovering) Who He was and what He was to do. As a human being, He had to grapple with His own personal future. His mother would have told him about the predictions she had heard and taught Him the prophecies in the Jewish Scriptures about the Messiah’s coming. These experiences would move Him to reflect, pray, and move slowly into His future, but not with perfect clarity of sight.
Tomorrow is the last day of the year 2020. We look backward with a bit of cloudiness – and a lot of relief. 20/20 is the number given to perfect human vision. This past year we all have suffered. We ran into many hard times and we had difficulties perceiving what certain events were really all about. Having 20/20 vision is not actually perfect. We cannot see around corners or actually very far. Looking backward, we may still not be able to see what the virus gave us or took from us. As with Jesus, we have had to live a bit of the “hidden-life”: perhaps like Jesus, we “grew strong, filled with wisdom”. We complained and experienced some not-so-good aspects of humanity. As Jesus waited for His time with the vision of faith and hope, we wait for the vaccine and our return, our re-visioning a better world. Looking backward holds the possibilities of seeing ourselves, others, and all God’s creation uncleared by the same wisdom into which Jesus advanced. This wisdom is founded in a grateful receptivity of our human poverty and God’s infinite embrace walking with us into the new year. “Lord, that I may see.”