When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Today marks forty days since we celebrated the great solemnity of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On this fortieth day, in compliance with the dictates of their community’s customs and traditions, Mary and Joseph took the child Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem in order to PRESENT him to the Lord God. In addition to formally bringing to conclusion the celebration of the birth of a child in the Hebrew culture, the event of the presentation of the child also doubled as a thanksgiving ceremony. It was an occasion of thanksgiving to God (on behalf of the mother) for a successful pregnancy and childbirth. Jesus was Mary’s first child (he opened the mother’s womb) and as such his successful birth had to be attributed to God having looked upon the mother and child with favor. 
As the passage constituting today’s Gospel Reading recounts, the rite of the presentation of the child Jesus was carried out in observance of a religious law. The law [of Moses] dictated and required that every first-born [male] child was to be presented to the Lord as a consecration. The Lord, the giver and sustainer of life, had laid claim to the first-fruits of man’s labor. This included the first-born of both man and beast (cf. Exodus 13:2). But whereas the first-fruits of the animals (except that of a donkey) and plants were to be offered to the Lord as sacrificial offering, the first-born of man had to be “redeemed” by the parents. In other words, the parents of the child had to buy back (redeem) their child from God by offering a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons (cf. Exodus 13:11-16). This “buying back” of the first born was necessitated by the fact that the first-born of man could not be offered as a [burnt] sacrifice to the Lord. The Lord God does not approve of human sacrifice. 
Whereas the presentation of the child Jesus was done according to the traditions and customs of his community, it is also true that it was nonetheless a unique and an unrepeatable celebration because of who Jesus is. Jesus is not only Mary and Joseph's son. Jesus is God's begotten son (cf. Matthew 3:17; Luke 3:22). This implies that it was not only Mary and Joseph who, on that day, were presenting the child Jesus in the temple. As Jesus’ Father, God was also “presenting” his first-born son. However, God’s presentation of Jesus differed from that of Mary and Joseph. For while Mary and Joseph, in thanksgiving, consecrated Jesus to the Lord and then redeemed him with a pair of turtledoves, God offered Jesus as an expiating (atoning) sacrifice [cf. Romans 3:25; I John 2:2]. Unlike the first-borns of men who had to be redeemed, God’s first born was not to be redeemed. Instead, he became the redeeming sacrifice that was offered by God (cf. Exodus 13:12) to take away the faults of his (Jesus’) brothers and sisters. As the atoning sacrifice, Jesus replaced the animals that were to be used to redeem his brothers and sisters (cf. Second Reading). As the first born son of God and our elder brother, Jesus is presented (by God) to us today as our salvation, that is, as the means for us to "keep" our lives. He has taken away our mortality and given us life in God. Ours is a life redeemed at an expensive price, the price of human blood, the blood of our eldest brother (cf. Romans 8:29d; Colossians 1:15). 
Secondly, the presentation of Jesus was a unique one because it incorporated in itself the consecration of Jesus’ brothers and sisters. As the eldest brother of the descendants of Adam and Eve, Jesus has incorporated the entire human race in himself. Consequently, when God presented Jesus as an expiating sacrifice, Jesus was also presenting his brothers and sisters as a fragrant sacrifice to the Lord. In other words, even as Jesus was being presented by his Father to the world as the only means of the salvation of the universe, Jesus was presenting his brothers and sisters to the Father as a renewed creation. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Jesus was presenting to the Father a people that has been freed from the tethers of the slavery of darkness and death. In his presentation, Jesus, the high priest, was consecrating a new human race to the Father. 
The celebration of the Presentation of the Lord is an invitation to us to reflect on our own consecration as a people of God. We have been given a new life through Jesus’ self-offering. By how we live our redeemed lives, may we demonstrate that Jesus’ self-offering on our behalf was not in vain.