Please read the passage before the commentary.
Recall that God sent the angel Gabriel in chapter one to reveal God’s messages to Zechariah and Mary. God had earlier sent Gabriel to the prophet Daniel (Daniel 9:20-27). There, Gabriel had revealed that in seventy weeks, the anointed leader will come with the rebuilding of the holy places.
I mention this because it seems that Luke has laid out his infancy narrative with this prophecy of Daniel in mind. Seventy weeks equal 490 days, 15 months and forty days. Luke recorded the pregnancies of both John and Jesus. Together that is a period of 15 months because for three months of that time both women shared being with child. Forty days after Jesus’ birth his parents brought Jesus to the Temple to present him to the Lord.
What we have in this reading is no ordinary visit to the Temple. It is heroic, the Lord himself was coming to take possession of his Temple. Tomorrow and Wednesday we shall read about two official witnesss, Simeon and Anna.
This would be a time of great rejoicing, when thew Lord comes to claim what is God’s right to claim. It is a time for us to rejoice, because are incorporated into Jesus the Christ. He had become one like us so that we could be many like him. As Jesus is divine yet human, so we are human and also divine.