The Presentation

Andrea Celesti, Presentación de Jesús en el Templo (Wikimedia Commons)

Although our family commemorates the events of Luke 2:21-40 shortly after Christmas, usually on the Sunday following it, traditionally they are recognized in the liturgies of many Christian churches 40 days after the Feast of the Nativity.  This is because the Presentation of Jesus in the temple is associated in the Lucan narrative with Mary's purification, which came forty day's after Jesus' birth.  In the Anglican tradition (and formerly in the Catholic), the Presentation is celebrated as "Candlemas," partially as a recollection of the lamps of the temple, when candles for the coming year are brought to the church and blessed.  In the Eastern Orthodox churches, the feast is often called Hypapante, Greek for "meeting," which recollects how the prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna met the Messiah in the temple.


Sections of the Presentation Episode (Luke 2:21–40)

• Circumcision and Naming of Jesus (Luke 2:21)
• Mary’s Purification (Luke 2:22–24)
• Simeon’s Testimony (Luke 2:25–35)
• Canticle: Nunc Demittis (Luke 2:29–32, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”)
• Anna’s Testimony (Luke 2:36–40)

Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple (see Good Tidings of Great Joy, 88-90) 

Leviticus 12:1–8 mandated that when a woman gave birth, she must be purified of ritual uncleanliness after a period of forty days. As diligent keepers of the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took advantage of their proximity to Jerusalem to make the appropriate offering at the temple in connection with her purification. Although the designated offering was a yearling lamb along with a dove, they took advantage of the alternative that the Law allowed those who were poor to substitute a pair of doves. References to Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22a, 24) frame a second ceremony, the redemption of the firstborn (Luke 2:22b–23). After the Lord delivered the children of Israel from Egypt, he had claimed the firstborn of every family in return for having spared them the night of the first Passover, requiring them to be consecrated to his service (see Exodus 13:2, 12–15). Although the Lord later accepted the service of the entire tribe of Levi in place of the firstborn of all Israel, the Lord still required that the firstborn be redeemed by the price of five shekels (Numbers 18:15–16).

The redemption of the firstborn did not need to take place in the temple, but the presence of the holy family in the sanctuary for Mary’s purification provided Luke with the opportunity for some important symbolism. While we can assume that Joseph and Mary paid the required five shekels required by the law, by not mentioning the actual payment, Luke implies that Jesus continued in the service of the God rather than being redeemed from it. In this the story of the Old Testament prophet Samuel had served as an anticipation: after he had been weaned, Elkanah and Hannah had brought the boy Samuel to the sanctuary at Shiloh, where he was presented and left for a lifetime of service to God (1 Samuel 1:24–28). Recalling how Hannah’s song had served as a model for Mary’s own Magnificat strengthens the connection, suggesting that Mary too was willingly presenting her son to God. While Jesus does not remain in the temple, during his later boyhood visit, he makes it clear that he belongs there and that his mission is to be about his Father’s business (Luke 2:46–49).

Simeon's Testimony (see Good Tidings of Great Joy, 91-92)

Greg Olsen, Simeon Reverencing the Christ Child

The name Hebrew Šimʿon (Greek Symeōn and hence Symeon or Simeon) may mean both “[YHWH] had heard” and “one who hears and obeys.” While numerous early Christian legends grew up about Simeon, Luke simply introduces him by describing Simeon as “just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him” (Luke 2:25, emphases added). The term translated “consolation” is the Greek paraklēsin; in addition to meaning help, comfort, or relief, in origin it means “summons” or “encouragement” and has the same root as “Comforter” (paraklētos; see John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).

This good man, assumed to be elderly and approaching death because of his subsequent words, had received a promise by the Holy Ghost “that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). Accordingly, the Spirit brought him to the temple at just the right time to encounter the holy family, whereupon he takes the child in his arms and blesses him (Luke 2:28). This Simeon at the beginning of the story of Jesus thus finds a certain parallel with Joseph of Arimathaea at its end: that Joseph is also just, waits for the kingdom of God, and, in taking Jesus down from the cross and burying him, likewise takes him in his arms (see Luke 23:50–53).

At that moment Simeon blesses God and utters an inspired song, the fourth and final canticle in Luke’s Infancy Narrative (Luke 2:29–32). By tradition it is known as the Nunc Demittis, from the Latin for the first line: “Now you are sending away your servant in peace” (KJV, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word”). Having at last seen the promised Savior, Simeon feels that he can die comforted and reassured “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” He then continues by describing this salvation in terms rich with Old Testament allusions (see Psalm 98:3; Isaiah 40:5, 42:6, 49:6, 52:9–10). However, whereas Zacharias had also sung of salvation in the Benedictus, his prophecy had centered on the deliverance that would come to Israel. Simeon, by contrasts, speaks of how Christ has been prepared for all people, and he balances both Gentiles and Israel in the final line, calling him “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32).

Concluding the canticle, Simeon turns to Mary and speaks a final prophecy, telling her, “this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against” (Luke 2:34), prophesying that while Jesus was the glory of Israel, many of his own people would reject him and he would cause divisions even within families (see Luke 12:51–53). Finally, Simeon alludes to the Passion and death of Jesus that Mary would witness so poignantly, telling her that her own soul would be pierced but that in the end judgment would come through her son’s sacrifice (Luke 2:35; see John 19:25, 33–34).

Simeon and Believers Today

The image of the aged Simeon in the temple, meeting at last his promised Savior, is one that resonates with many believers today. It is also one that has come to have special, personal meaning to me. In 2010, just four days before Christmas, my grandfather, Cannon Huntsman, died. Two days after Christmas we buried him. Funerals at Christmastime are always poignant, even when they are held for good men and women who die at an old age. The sense of loss and sadness can weigh heavily on and even dampen the Christmas spirit.

But it was the story of Simeon that gave me great comfort the day after Christmas. I read it that night to Elaine and the children, and I decided to use it in my remarks at the funeral the next day. As long as health permitted, Grandpa spent as much time as he could in the temple. And like Simeon, he had a powerful faith in his Savior and Redeemer. While he did not hold the Baby Jesus in his arms nor see the Risen Lord in the flesh, Grandpa had seen the hand of the Lord all his life and rejoiced in his testimony of Jesus.

While modern revelation tells us “thou shalt live together in love insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die,” it also reassures us that “those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them” (D&C 42:45–46). I have come to believe that men and women of Christ, like Grandpa, can share the sentiment of Simeon when their time comes, crying out in their hearts, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” (Luke 2:29).

 
Anna's Testimony (see Good Tidings of Great Joy, 92)

James Tissot, The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 
(Wikimedia Commons)

Luke’s narrative provides a second witness in the temple in the person of Anna, an elderly widow who spent every day in the temple in prayer and fasting (Luke 2:36–37). Significantly, she is described as a prophetess, connecting her with Deborah, Huldah, the wife of Isaiah, and perhaps Samuel’s mother, Hannah. Indeed, Anna is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Ḥannah, providing another connection with the story of Jesus’ birth and that of the prophet Samuel. At a time when most Jews were from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, Luke notes that Anna was from the tribe of Asher, perhaps suggesting that the lost tribes of Israel too await the coming of Christ. Having married young, perhaps between 10 and 14, she had lost her husband after seven years, and, depending upon how the next verse is read, she was either 84 years old or had lived another 84 years after her husband’s death, making her as old as 103 or 105. While the actual words of this faithful woman are not preserved, like Simeon she first blesses or thanks God and then “spake [Greek, elalei or “kept speaking”] of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Christmas Quick Links

Preparing for Christmas | Celebrating Advent | First Advent | Second Advent | Third Advent | O Antiphons: The Coming Messiah | Fourth Advent | Christmas Eve | The Focus of Advent and Christmas | Daily December Christmas Devotional Ideas | Christmas throughout the Year |
Epiphany | The Presentation

Christmas Night by Max Lucado

Max Lucado is a well-known and beloved author as well as a minister at Oak Hills Church. Please see the Max Lucado website for additional stories, books, and other inspirational links.

I stumbled upon this gem many years ago when feeling sad and letdown at the end of a busy but happy Christmas season. It has now become an annual tradition to re-light the candles of our Advent wreath at the end of Christmas Day and read this story, which always makes me weep at the line "In the emotion of the father who is too thankful to finish the dinner table prayer." I have not been able to find it online again, but reproduce it here with all credit to Reverend Lucado.

Ideas for Celebrating Easter

2020 Note: In the wake of the Corona virus pandemic, we are approaching the central holidays of Passover, Holy Week, Easter, and Ramadan (which comes unusually early this year) at a time when we are not able to commemorate them and worship with our faith communities as we usually do. I hope, for Latter-day Saints especially and for Christians more generally, that the materials I provide on this blog might be particularly useful resources for individuals and families to turn more intensely to scriptures, music, prayer, and family traditions as a way of finding greater peace and hope in these uncertain time. 

Wishing love, blessings, and especially health to all this season
Eric Huntsman, Lent 2020


See also my 2011 LDS Living article, "Preparing For Easter: Ideas for Celebrating."

Carl Bloch, He Is Risen

Given that Easter is actually the more important holiday theologically-speaking, I am surprised that it receives so much less attention than Christmas.  While we spend the whole month of December—and often even more—decorating for Christmas, shopping, and listening to Christmas music, far less preparation seems to go into our celebration of Easter.

As all holidays—religious and national—become increasingly more commercialized, it seems more incumbent than ever for families and individuals to make an effort to have them serve better as teaching and commemorative opportunities.

Many of our initial efforts to make holidays more special were initially driven by the desire to use them to teach our children principles of the gospel and focus them more clearly on Jesus Christ.  But as we have done so, we have found that they have blessed our lives as well.  Sometimes using music, decorations, or other holiday customs with these purposes in mind has reinforced our faith in the very things that we are trying to teach Rachel and Samuel

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Using our more familiar and established Christmas traditions as a guide, in recent years we have adapted them for Easter.  We have tried to decorate a bit more for Easter and have developed the family tradition of using the week before Easter to focus us more on the events leading up to the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Ideas for this revolve mostly on using the scriptural accounts of the Savior’s last days as the material for our personal and family scripture study, but they also include trying to listen to and sing more music fit for the season.

Easter Decorations and Customs

Admittedly Easter does not enjoy the repertoire of holiday decorations that Christmas does, and many of the more common decorations have more to do with eggs and bunnies than they do with the dying and rising Lord.  We have found that not only symbols of spring and new life, such as flowers and plants, but even fun decorations, such as Easter eggs and the occasional rabbit, can still create a feeling of joy in and around our home. As much as a Utah spring will allow, I clean up the yard and flower beds a couple of weeks before Easter, and we have planted plenty of early blooming flowers such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and primroses.

A few traditional Easter lilies and some other flowering plants in the living room helps sets Easter week apart as something different just as a Christmas tree and evergreens do in December  But we have also found that putting pictures of scenes from Jesus’ final week—the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion, and the empty tomb—provide visual reminders of what the week is about and give us opportunities to talk to the children about what we are celebrating.

Our "Easter crèche"

Along those lines, we also have a small statuette of Jesus praying, a lovely olive wood Last Supper scene from Bethlehem, and, perhaps most unusually, an “Easter crèche.”  Our Nativity scene plays such an important role at Christmas-time, that we were thrilled when we found a combined Palm Sunday and Garden Tomb scene by Fontantini, the same maker as our Christmas scene.

Celebrating a modified form of Advent has also become an important part of our Christmas season.  Not just on the four Sundays of Advent but also on each evening of December leading up to Christmas our family gathers around our Advent wreath to hold a short Christmas devotional (see below).  My son, who struggles with some of the challenges of autism, loves this tradition, so recently I decided to come up with something similar—an Easter wreath, if you will. A bright, flowery seasonal wreath, it sits on our living room coffee table and sports three candles: a purple one for the kingly portion of Holy Week, a red one for the priestly portion, and a white candle for Easter Sunday.

First attempt at a Lazarakia

Finally, in addition to the usual decorating of Easter eggs, we have adopted some other traditional customs, such as making Lazarakia bread on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and hot cross buns on Good Friday.  It is fun to bake together, and, in the process, talk about what the treats represent.

Daily Easter Devotionals

We have for some time had the tradition of holding daily Christmas devotionals each day in December leading up to Christmas.  Gathering each evening for a Christmas story, a scripture, and a carol has become a treasured Yuletide custom, one that  helps us keep Christ the focus ot that season.  I soon realized that we could do something similar for Easter, at least for one week.

I first came up with the idea of putting together a reading schedule for my ward when I was a young bishop.  Preparing it became the genesis of an annual study of the last days of the Savior’s life, which served as the genesis of my published treatment of the Passion Narratives (see God So Loved the World, 2–3).  That book hoped to serve as a resource not only for individual study but also as the source of ideas for family devotionals. 

So while I try to read and study all the gospels’ accounts of the Savior’s final days in the week before Easter, each evening during that week our family gathers around our “Easter wreath,” reviews the events of that day of the Savior’s life, reads one or two representative passages from the gospels, sings a song, and has family prayer.

For those who might be interested in holding similar devotionals themselves, I have made blog posts for the days leading up to Easter on my Latter-day Saint Seasonal Materials blog. The ordering of events are done according to a working chronology that I have produced that looks at the sequence of events in the New Testament Gospels, which also takes into account the traditional liturgical observances of these events:

• Before Holy Week
  
• Friday and/or Saturday: The Raising of Lazarus and The Anointing in Bethany according to John
• Palm Sunday: The Triumphal Entry; the Cleansing of the Temple
• Monday: The Marcan Cleansing of the Temple; Teachings in the Temple
• Tuesday: More Teachings in the Temple; the Olivet Discourse
• "Spy" Wednesday: The Anointing in Mark and Matthew; Judas agrees to betray Jesus
• Holy or "Maundy" Thursday: The Last Supper; Farewell Discourses; Gethsemane; Before the Jewish Authorities
• Good Friday: Jesus in the Hands of the Romans; the Crucifixion; the Burial
• Saturday: Soldiers Guard the Tomb; Jesus in the Spirit World
• Easter Sunday: The Resurrection

For more in-depth study, I have also gathered all of the gospel accounts into one convenient document, which has been formatted in a "reader's edition" and organized day-by-day: http://erichuntsman.com/documents/HolyWeekReadings.pdf  

In the tradition of the medieval verdant cross. Often the cross was green in stained glass windows, and sometimes paintings depicted it sprouting leaves, flowers, and even fruit. The idea was that the dead tree of cursing (the instrument of Jesus' death) became a new Tree of Life (the instrument of our salvation and resurrection).

Passion and Easter Music

Just as Christmas music adds to the spirit of that season, so does appropriate music add to mood of Holy Week.  In God So Loved the World, I selected hymns that went along with the topics and moods of each day.  On the focal days—Thursday through Sunday, I also tried to identify music to listen to from great composers and arrangers such as Bach, Handel, Cundick, and Wilberg.

Since some of this musical literature is not as familiar to many Latter-day Saints, in 2011 I interviewed Craig Jessop, former music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Andrew Unsworth, one of the Tabernacle organists, for a special Easter program for the Mormon Channel.  They reviewed the tradition of Passion and Easter music and gave suggestions for listening that will add to the season.

While much of this traditional music is solemn and even sad, I have found that listening to this reflective music, just like reading the serious gospels texts leading up to the suffering and death of Jesus, only adds to the joy of Easter morning, providing not just a contrast but also stressing what a victory it really was.

Along those lines, in 2014 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has released a 5-track CD for Easter, beginning with "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and then ending with 4 glorious tracks celebrating the resurrection. 

A few more photos of Holy Week at the Huntsmans' 2014.

Easter Quick Links

Preliminary Materials

Ideas for Celebrating Easter  | A Working Chronology  |  The Raising of Lazarus | The Symbolism of Jesus as Anointed King and Priest: The Anointing in John 

The Passion Week and the Resurrection  

Palm Sunday  |  Monday  | Tuesday  |  "Spy" Wednesday:  |  Holy or "Maundy" Thursday  |  Good Friday  |  Saturday  |   Easter Sunday