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Friday, February 2, 2024 was the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. It recalls Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus, as a baby, 40 days after His birth. (The birthday we celebrate as Christmas.) In doing so His parents followed a thousand-year-old custom that began with Moses. In Exodus 13:2, God told Moses, “Consecrate to me every firstborn male:”

Counting forward from December 25 as Day One [for Jesus], we find that Day Forty is February 2. A Jewish woman is in semi-seclusion for 40 days after giving birth to a son, and accordingly it is on February 2 that we celebrate the coming of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus to the Temple at Jerusalem.

Then there’s the painting above, of Jesus “presented” a second time. But this time it was Pontius Pilate, showing Him to the mob. A reminder that from the time of His first Presentation – at just over a month old – Jesus’ life was one long journey to that second presentation. (On the eve of making the sacrifice that would literally change history, if not “split history in two.”) 

In a similar way, February 2, 2024 marks the beginning of our own spiritual journey: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” And this year – as every church year – that journey goes through the rest of Epiphany Season, then to Mardi Gras, followed by Lent, then on into Easter Week. (A reminder that life is not all fun and games. It’s an alternating rhythm of good times and “challenges.” Put another way, an alternating rhythm of “feasting and fasting.”)

Getting back to the Presentation, it’s one of the most ancient Church feasts, dating back as far as the fourth century in Jerusalem. As to the original Presentation, where it all started:

Luke explicitly says that Joseph and Mary take the option provided for poor people (those who could not afford a lamb; Leviticus 12:8), sacrificing “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Leviticus 12:1–4… Upon bringing Jesus into the temple, they encountered Simeon[, who] had been promised that “he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). Simeon then uttered the prayer that would become known as the Nunc Dimittis, or Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus

But were Mary and Joseph really poor? Some might ask, “What happened to that gold, frankincense and myrrh that the Three Wise Men gave the parents?” (The gold could be easily spent, while the other two would be easily “hockable.”) A medieval Jesuit had this comment: “Although the three kings had offered to Christ a great quantity of gold, still the Blessed Virgin, zealously affected towards poverty, accepted but little of it, that she might show her contempt of all earthly things.” Which is as good an answer as any, but still, “Where whence those gifts?”

But that’s what people call a rabbit trail. A “convoluted discourse or tangential aside.” More to the point, could there be a deeper meaning of the Presentation in the Temple? According to the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, the answer is Yes.

Aside from Mary having to be purified, all male firstborns had to be “consecrated to God in a special way.” But there were two other elements to the story. First, the parents didn’t have to go to the Temple, so Mary and Joseph were being “extra devout by going to the Temple for this special day.” (And according to Google Maps, that’s at least a 33-hour hike of over 90 miles.)

Second, according to one Pope, Luke was saying that instead of being “redeemed” and restored to his parents, Jesus was personally handed over, “given over completely to God.” Thus:

The Presentation isn’t just another boring religious ritual. On the contrary, it is a deeply symbolic moment pointing to Jesus’s divine identity, and to Mary and Joseph’s perfect cooperation with His divine mission.

And speaking of handing over a life to God, the Daily Office for February 3, 2024, added another set of saints to remember, The Dorchester Chaplains. They were four chaplains who died rescuing other passengers when a German submarine torpedoed the American troop ship Dorchester on February 3, 1943. (In what was called “the second-worst sea disaster of World War II.”)

The chaplains helped the other soldiers board lifeboats and gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out. The chaplains joined arms, said prayers, and sang hymns as they went down with the ship.

All lieutenants, the group included “Methodist minister the Reverend George L. Fox, Reform Rabbi Alexander D. Goode (PhD), Catholic priest Father John P. Washington, and Reformed Church in America minister the Reverend Clark V. Poling.”

Wikipedia added more detail, the gist of which is that panic set in when a torpedo knocked out the ship’s electrical system, at 1:00 in the morning in the stormy North Atlantic. The chaplains did what they could to calm passengers and organize the evacuation. They got life jackets, but when the preservers ran out the chaplains gave theirs to others. Then too, the jackets did little to protect against hypothermia in the frigid water; “hundreds of dead bodies were seen floating on the water, kept up by their life jackets.” Thus only 230 of the 940 passengers survived.

As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.

That’s according to one survivor. Others heard different languages in the chaplains’ prayers, “including Jewish prayers in Hebrew and Catholic prayers in Latin” as the ship sank. A reminder again “that life is not all fun and games,” and that we have been gifted. Despite all the troubles we see in the news, we are blessed to be alive and enjoy the upcoming church seasons.

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The upper image is courtesy of Pontius Pilate – Wikipedia.  The caption:  “Ecce Homo (‘Behold the Man’), Antonio Ciseri‘s depiction of Pilate presenting a scourged Jesus to the people of Jerusalem.”

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

For this post I borrowed – in reverse order – On the Presentation of Jesus – 2/2/22, The “Presentation of our Lord” – 2020, and earlier, from 2017, On the FIRST “Presentation of the Lord.” The 2017 post included such details as the “quaint custom [which] came to be called ‘the churching of Women,’ starting – as far as we can tell – back in the Middle Ages, based on what Moses taught. The ritual was still offered by the Catholic Church until the 1960s, but then discontinued.” Which raised the question: “Since Mary hadn’t been ‘sullied’ in the normal manner of procreation,” why did she have to be “churched,” as Moses apparently commanded?  See also Presentation of Jesus – Wikipedia.

Re: “Today.” See Today – Wikiquote. The “rest of your life” quote is attributed to Charles Dederich, “the founder of Synanon, a self-help community for drug abusers and alcoholics, based in California.” See also And if that doesn’t work out… And about that gold, etc. It’s possible that the Wise Men arrived well after the Presentation, and so Mary and Joseph hadn’t gotten the gifts yet. They may have arrived “days, months, or possibly even years later.” What does the Bible say about the three wise men (Magi)? As to the value of the gifts, see Gold prized; frankincense, myrrh may have had more value, adding that the Gifts of Magi “foreshadowed Jesus’ life of kingship, divinity, and saving death.”

Re: “Medieval Jesuit.” Se Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637), at the Wikipedia article about the Flemish Catholic priest, Jesuit and “exegete of Sacred Scripture.”

Also, on the February 3, see Four Chaplains – Wikipedia, with the lower image.

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December 17, 2023 – It’s that time of year again. Time to wonder – as if we don’t already have enough on our plate to worry about – Should Parents Tell Children the Truth About Santa? The short answer: Yes, there really is – or was – a Saint Nicholas. And actually, there are several foundational figures, prototypes for today’s “Santa Claus.” One of the first was Nikolaos of Myra.

He was a historic, bond fide 4th-century saint and Bishop of Myra (Demre, part of today’s Turkey). He was also called “Nikolaos the Wonderworker,” thanks to miracles “attributed to his intercession.” See Saint Nicholas – Wikipedia, and also Saint Nicholas … Britannica:

Saint Nicholas, also called Nicholas of Bari or Nicholas of Myra [is] one of the most popular minor saints commemorated in the Eastern and Western churches and now traditionally associated with the festival of Christmas. In many countries children receive gifts on December 6, Saint Nicholas Day.

To which I would respond: “He doesn’t seem to be such a minor ‘saint’ these days.”

And speaking of corruption – nothing new these days – that brings up the three innocent men sentenced to death, in the painting atop the page. It was the “corrupt prefect Eustathios” who imposed the sentence. (After accepting bribes to “bring about the deaths of three men.”) This first St. Nicholas “was not one to be intimidated by the power of others, especially the power of the corrupt.” Accordingly, he “stormed into the prefect’s office and demanded that the charges against the three men be dropped.” Eustathios eventually “confessed … and sought the saint’s forgiveness.” Nicholas forgave him, but only after the ruler underwent a period of repentance. Which led me to think: “Boy, we could sure use him today!!!“

Other stories told of Nicholas of Myra’s “love for God and for his neighbor.”  Like providing dowries for three poor unmarried daughters.  (Thus saving them from a life of prostitution.)  Or of three children killed and “pickled” by a butcher – during a time of extreme famine and cannibalism – who planned “to sell them off as ham.”  But Nicholas both “’saw through the butcher’s horrific crime’ and resurrected the three children from the barrel.”

And while it’s true that Christmas is only a week or so away, that famous festival is preceded by the Feast day of Thomas the Apostle (also known as “Doubting Thomas”), on December 21. And Thomas – in a big way – serves as a metaphor for all us “Doubters.”

That is, the term “Doubting Thomas” refers to a “skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience.” But as I’ve noted previously, that’s just what attending church and reading the Bible is supposed to provide: A chance at a direct and personal experience with the Force that Created the Universe. See also The Bible and mysticism, which said that Christianity is all about “obtaining unity with God, through Christ.” So a mystic and a Christian both seek that “direct personal experience with God.:

In plain words there are two sides of the Christian experience:  The “corporate” or business side, and the “mystical” side.  The problem is that so many Christians get hung up on the “business side” of the Christian faith.  Mainly because it’s so much easier…  But it’s only the mystical side that can lead to a direct personal experience with God, and Thomas the Apostle is a reminder that – hard as that may be – it can be done….

On that note there’s the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, “a way to understand our four-sided approach to answering questions about Christian belief and practice.” Those four sides include Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. And of those four: “What Scripture teaches, tradition affirms and reason supports, must be experienced in Christian community and lives. Without authentic experience, we never move beyond the faith of the devils.” Put another way, “Apart from scripture, experience is the strongest proof of Christianity.”

So here’s wishing you first a happy “original Doubting Thomas” day, then a happy “real St. Nick” festival day. And that if you haven’t found it already, that in the New Year coming up you can find that “direct personal experience with God.” (But not necessarily in the same way as those three “innocents condemned to death” at the top of the page…)

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The upper image is courtesy of Saint Nicholas – Wikipedia, with the caption:  “Saint Nicholas Saves Three Innocents from Death (oil painting by Ilya Repin, 1888, State Russian Museum).”   See also St. Nicholas Center … Saint Who Stopped an Execution. 

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

Re: Santa. See also Should Parents Go Along With the Santa Myth? – Psychology Today.

For this post I borrowed from some of my earlier posts, On the original St. Nicholas (2014), On St. Nick and “Doubting Thomas” (2015), There really IS a “Saint Nick” (Virginia…), from 2017, and Santa saves three men, and “Doubting” shows the way (2018).

Re: Quadrilateral. See also The Wesleyan Quadrilateral – The Wesleyan Church.

The lower image is courtesy of Santa Claus – Wikipedia, captioned, “1881 illustration by Thomas Nast who, along with Clement Clarke Moore’s poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas,’ helped to create the modern image of Santa Claus.” As to the original, see St. Nicholas Center ::: Saint Who Stopped an Execution, which told of his hearing the news, then rushing to the site of the planned execution:

Informed that their execution was to be carried out that morning, he hurried to the executioner’s field. Here he found a large crowd of people and the three men kneeling with their arms bound, awaiting the fatal blow. Nicholas passed through the crowd, took the sword from the executioner’s hands and threw it to the ground, then ordered that the condemned men be freed from their bonds. His authority was such that the executioner left his sword where it fell…

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I’ll get to Thanksgiving in a bit, but first want to say something about a tendency to go down Rabbit Trails. I do a lot of that in my writing. That’s why my family and others say my writing “goes all over the place.” Like, sometimes I go “off on a crazy tangent” or make crazy turns in writing. But I like rabbit trails, even as I try to follow that rule about Unity and Coherence in Writing. Which brings up a Bible passage I saw in Monday morning’s Daily Office Readings.

The Gospel was Matthew 17:14-2. In the Lectionary – Satucket version, Matthew 17:15 reads, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly.” That made me wonder. I’ve been doing the Daily Office since 1992, and am now on my 15th trip through the Bible. But this is the first time in those 31 years that that passage caught my eye. “Is that how it’s written in Greek? Did the Hebrews or Greeks know that much about epilepsy?”

Which turned out to be another rabbit trail, which is nothing new for me.

Like some time ago my Daily Office reading included Psalm 46:9, “He makes wars cease… He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” That made me wonder. Why specifically burn shields, those broad pieces of “defensive armor carried on the arm?” So I “rabbit trailed” and learned that in the original Hebrew, the word – translated “shields” – refers to “Something revolving, a wheeled vehicle.” More precisely, a chariot, the offensive tank of its day. Which means going down rabbit trails can be educational, so here’s the latest one.

 It seemed to me – Monday morning – that the term “epilepsy” sounded way too modern for Matthew to use. So first off I went to the Bible Hub website. I wanted to see how the verse got translated in the King James Bible. (You know, the one God uses?) There the passage reads, “Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed.” And most other translations read that the son had “seizures.” So I wondered, was this one of those new, updated translations that conservatives call “undignified?” (As departures from the “real” Bible, as noted by Garry Wills?) As for example, 1st Corinthians 14:6, where the original Greek reads, “Now brothers…” But some updated modern versions read, “Now brothers and sisters.” To that I’d say, “Use ‘brothers and sisters’ now, as long as we know how the original version read.”

Be all that as it may, that Matthew 17:15 rabbit trail led me to “something new under the sun:”

The ancient Greeks also began to speculate on the causes of epilepsy at this time – in fact the word ‘epilepsy’ comes from the Greek word for ‘to seize’ or ‘to attack’ because they believed seizures were caused by demons grabbing or attacking people. Some … also believed that epilepsy was a divine gift and a sign of genius and they called it the ‘sacred disease.’

None of which I knew, but learned about – just this past Monday morning, for the first time – from The history of epilepsy – the ancient world | Epilepsy blog. The article said that Hippocrates – who died in 370 BC, “father of medicine” – took issue with the idea that epilepsy was a “sacred disease ” idea. He said, of “the disease called ‘sacred[:]’ It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred than any other diseases, but has a natural cause … the fact is that the cause of this affection … is the brain.” The article concluded, “This is arguably when epilepsy was discovered.” In other words, some time around 400 B.C., or almost 500 years before Matthew wrote his Gospel, some Greeks knew about epilepsy. (Though the article added that “Hippocrates’s beliefs were not widely understood at the time and most people in the ancient world still thought seizures were caused by demons.”)

Which means there’s no clear cut answer to the question, “Was ‘epilepsy’ too modern a term for Matthew to use?” Or it could be said the answer “lies somewhere in between.” Maybe Matthew didn’t know the full technical term “epilepsy” as we understand it today. On the other hand the general term used back then did cover a lot of linguistic territory. It mostly referred to “seizures,” as generally translated in most Bibles. Which also is nothing new.

That is, the situation also resembles the faulty translation of “leprosy” from the Hebrew word ẓaraʿat. While traditionally translated at “leprosy,” the Greek translation for this word too “covers a wide range of diseases that produced scales.” And the original Hebrew word ẓaraʿat too embraced “a variety of skin ailments, including many non-contagious types.” Which also means, “There he goes again, going down one of those dang rabbit trails!”)

Which means in turn that it’s about time we got back to Thanksgiving 2023. Put another way, “What do all those rabbit trails have to do with the American holiday every November?” I’ll get to that in a minute, but first a note: “Thanksgiving” in America actually started a long time before 1863, when that day was made a nationwide holiday by Abraham Lincoln. And for that matter even long before 1621, with the first “Pilgrim Thanksgiving” in Plymouth Massachusetts.

For Native Americans – the first inhabitants – “gathering to give thanks was already a familiar custom, taking place not just annually, but 13 times throughout the lunar, calendar year – a cycle known as the Thirteen Moons. As one Wampanoag said, “Thanksgivings are a big part of our culture. Giving thanks is how we pray.” (The Wampanoags were the tribe who helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter, when half of them died.)

In other words, special days of thanksgiving have been around a long, long time. And as it also turns out, for a very good reason: “As more researchers dig into the science of gratitude, they’ve found the feeling likely played a key role in helping our ancestors band together and survive.” Which turns up another rabbit trail. “Who knew there was a science of gratitude?”

But there is, and it has a definite healing effect: “Thanking others, thanking ourselves, Mother Nature, or the Almighty[,] gratitude in any form can enlighten the mind and make us feel happier.” Which is why our annual Thanksgiving and all its other forms have stuck around so long: “That legacy continues today, as being in the mood for gratitude shapes who we are as a species and how we connect with the people around us.”

Which could be another rabbit trail, but it’s time to bring this post to an end. To end with the custom in many families for each member, around the table, to say specifically what he or she is thankful for this Thanksgiving 2023. So I’ll start: I’m thankful for the chance to go down all those rabbit trails, and keep on learning new things, every day, through the magic of blogging.

Now, if I could just make those blog-posts all unified and coherent.

Happy Thanksgiving – 2023!

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The upper image is courtesy of Epilepsy Images Bible – Image Results. The image is attributed to “Wilhelm Tell,” not William Tell. (Which is the name I usually got in my Google Search.)

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

The full link to the Rabbit Trail comments is Today’s Idiom Is … Rabbit Trail.

For more on my tendency to go down Rabbit Trails see On Halloween 2023 – and a Sheol “rabbit trail,” which in turn borrowed from “the lower part of the text in On Eastertide – and ‘artistic license,’ from 2016.” Also on the topic of epilepsy see Is epilepsy mentioned in the Bible? | GotQuestions.org.

Re: Garry Wills. In his “What Jesus Meant” Wills noted a general conservatism in Bible translations, as for “reverential archaisms.” The result? Whenever a new translation comes out “it is almost always called undignified,” in that it departs from the King James Version. He added that the original Koine was a rough-hewn, “pidgin” marketplace Greek, often clumsy and muddled so much that translators invariably “try to give more churchiness to the evangelists.” Pages xi to xii, “Note on translation.”

Re: “Something new under the sun.” See contra, Ecclesiastes 1:9, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Re: “Brothers,” or “brothers and sisters.” The Bible Hub commentary to 1st Corinthians 14:6 said the Greek brothers (ἀδελφοί (adelphoi) – “Vocative Masculine Plural” – referred to a “brother, member of the same religious community, especially a fellow-Christian. A brother near or remote.”

As for Thanksgiving itself, see past post I borrowed from, like On Thanksgiving 2019, On Thanksgiving – 2021, and from 2022’s On Thanksgiving 2022 – and an Unknown American Icon. They detail things like the story of John Howland, who came over on the Mayflower as an indentured servant, who was swept overboard in mid-Atlantic and almost drowned, but who went on to populate America with 2 million of his descendants. And how less than half the original Pilgrims survived the first year, and how of the 18 women, only four survived. (And other juicy details.)

The “giving thanks” quotes are from Thanksgiving is a year-round practice of giving thanks : NPR, and Giving thanks isn’t just a holiday tradition. As Wikipedia also noted, Days of Thanksgivng were celebrated quite often in England. One such nationwide day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1588, after the victory over the Spanish Armada. Another “unusual annual Day of Thanksgiving” began in 1606 following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, but that day then evolved into Guy Fawkes Day. 

The Wampanoag taught the first Pilgrims “how to cultivate the varieties of corn, squash, and beans (the Three Sisters) that flourished in New England, as well as how to catch and process fish and collect seafood.” (Wikipedia.)

The lower image is courtesy of Thanksgiving – Wikipedia, caption: “Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts.” 

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