Commentary on the liturgy of February 2, 2021 by Don Luigi Maria Epicoco

The feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is accompanied by the passage from the Gospel that tells the story. The wait for Simeone does not simply tell us the story of this man, but tells us the structure that is the basis of every man and every woman. It is a waiting facility.

We often define ourselves in relation to our expectations. We are our expectations. And without realizing it, the true substance of all our expectations is always Christ. He is the true fulfillment of what we carry in our hearts.

The thing that perhaps we should all try to do is seek Christ by reviving our expectations. It is not easy to meet Christ if you do not have expectations. A life that has no expectations is always a sick life, a life full of weight and a sense of death. The search for Christ coincides with the strong awareness of a rebirth of a great expectation in our hearts. But never as in today's Gospel has the theme of Light been so well expressed:

"Light to illuminate the peoples and glory of your people Israel".

Light that dispels darkness. Light that reveals the content of darkness. Light that redeems the darkness from the dictatorship of confusion and fear. And all this is summarized in a child. Jesus has a specific task in our life. It has the task of turning on lights where there is only darkness. Because only when we name our evils, our sins, the things that frighten us, the things we limp on, only then are we enabled to eradicate them from our life.

Today is the feast of the "light on". Today we must have the courage to stop and call by name everything that is "against" our joy, everything that does not allow us to fly high: wrong relationships, distorted habits, sedimented fears, structured insecurities, unconfessed needs. Today we must not be afraid of this light, because only after this salutary "denunciation" can a "newness" that theology calls salvation begin within our life.