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 solemnity of the birth of our Lord. The event that we commemorate today formally concluded the celebration of the birth of a child in the Hebrew culture. It was a rite that was carried out in thanksgiving to God for a successful childbirth. Jesus was Mary’s first child (he opened the mother’s womb) and his successful birth had to be attributed to God having looked upon the mother and child with favor.
In addition to being a thanksgiving, the rite of presentation of the child Jesus was also carried out in observance of a religious law. The law [of Moses] dictated that every first-born 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). While the first-fruits of the animals and plants were to be offered to the Lord as sacrificial offering, the the first-born of man had to be “redeemed” since God did not approve of human sacrifice. This is why Mary and Joseph had to make an offering of two turtledoves in order to “redeem” Jesus (cf. Exodus 13:11-16).
However, the presentation of Jesus was a unique one because of who Jesus was. Jesus was not only Mary and Joseph's son. He is God's son and our first born brother (cf. Romans 829d; Col 1:15). Consequently, it was not only Mary and Joseph who presented Jesus. While Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in thanksgiving and redeemed him with a pair of turtledoves, God offered Jesus as an expiating sacrifice (cf. Romans 3:25; I John 2:2). Jesus became the redeeming sacrifice offered by God (cf. Exodus 13:12) to take away the faults of his brothers and sisters. He replaced the animals that were to be used to redeem his brothers and sisters (cf. Second Reading). Jesus is presented (by God) to us today as our salvation, that is, as the means of "keeping" our lives. He has taken away our mortality and given us life in God. It is a life redeemed at an expensive price, the price of human blood, the blood of our eldest brother. Do I honor that sacrifice? Or have I made that sacrifice to be in vain?