Grace Cathedral
Article | January 31, 2025
Congregation Update: Looking for Consolation
Blog|The Rev. Canon Anna E. Rossi
Dear Friends,
As Bishop Austin Rios preached last Sunday, it was not just any Sunday. In addition to the Bishop’s Annual Visitation, the Annual Meeting of the Congregation — in case you missed it, with awards and elections — we were also responding to a pivotal week in the life of church and state. Bishop Mariann Budde’s plea to the US President to have mercy on the vulnerable and frightened signaled both the need for moral leadership and the capacity of our tradition to minister prophetically in our times. In response, Bishop Rios characterized the ministry of Jesus as one which “expos[es] the falsehoods underpinning the Pax Romana, the myth of unfettered violence and suppression leading to peace.”
This Sunday is not just any Sunday.
This Sunday, the church gathers to celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, also known as Candlemas. In the central account (Luke 2:22-40), the aging Simeon is led by the Holy Spirit to the Jerusalem Temple, where, 40 days after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph present him with a simple offering. Simeon takes the child in his arms, and praises God, saying “Master, now you have dismissed your servant in peace.” The message of the Gospel is that by embracing what many regard as weak and expendable, we herald a truly divine light and peace.
Mary and Joseph made a journey to Jerusalem, and so it is fitting that early commemorations of the Feast were documented by a pilgrim, Egeria. In the late fourth century, she visited Jerusalem and recorded her journey for a community of women, likely based in modern-day Spain. Egeria’s pilgrimage spanned the near east, taking her far from the comforts of home and its familiar rites and customs. Like Simeon and Anna, whom the gospel remembered, Egeria looked expectantly for new consolation and redemption in her journey. She was willing to be dislodged in order to find her home in God.
The Feast of the Presentation stands as an inflection point in the liturgical calendar, with the texts and observances that led up to it forming the Christmas-Incarnation cycle, and those that come after looking to Jesus’ Passion. We know that to take a fragile infant in our arms is also to companion the fragility of human bodies through life, and suffering, to and through death. What begins with no place at the inn moves through betrayal, torture, and violence. Simeon’s blessing of the child concludes with a warning to his young mother that “a sword will pierce her soul too.”
This Sunday is not just any Sunday.
This Sunday, we cherish the many signs of God’s self-revelation, even as we turn toward the suffering of the cross. This Sunday, we remind ourselves that to be faithful is to be a pilgrim, to undertake a journey of unknowns so that we can encounter the Mystery of Love, the One who knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. This Sunday, we reclaim the peace that is in Christ, in whom our weakness is strength, and our surrender is an ultimate victory.
See you in church,
Anna