The Meeting of the Lord

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

 The Meeting of the Lord

In anticipation of the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple, here is a fine passage from Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, uncovering some of the deeper truths of the sacred text as found in the Gospel According to St. Luke (2:22-40)

The Infant was born on earth - the eternal God in a humble manger, but there was a place for Him in the Temple, for the Temple was built for Him. And He was brought into His Temple, where it pleased His Name to dwell (I Kings 8:29). But He came there not to receive veneration, but to serve many, in the form of a servant, veiling the radiance of His Divinity with the abject humility of the flesh. He came there as a son under the law, obedient to the law which He Himself had given to Moses, manifesting Himself as the model of obedience; for He came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. His Mother came to dedicate Her firstborn Son to God, to give God the Son to God the Father, and to offer the redemptive and purifying sacrifice. In giving birth to the Infant, She did not know sin; but just as He, sinless, came to receive from John the baptism of repentance, so She too, in Her immaculate birth, came to offer a sacrifice for sin, having in Her arms the One who truly was the Sacrifice for the sins of the entire world... It is not for glory but for the offering of sacrifice that the Lord is brought into His house, which had to receive and encompass the One who cannot be encompassed.

(Churchly Joy, p. 59-60)