the parents of Jesus took him up to Jerusalem
to present him to the Lord
The parents of Jesus held nothing back in their fidelity to God and his commands. They presented the gift they themselves had first been given back to God. Jesus was finally an offering who was, at last, entirely acceptable to God. It was as though the whole law had been waiting for him to come along. At every stage of his life he did perfectly what his ancestors had done poorly or not at all. In this case it was his very identity, not only as undamaged goods, but as one of infinite value, that made his presentation to the Lord so great. When he was presented the words of the prophet Malachi were at last fulfilled, that, "the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts" (see Malachi 3:1). Mary, for her part, was purified. This was not because of ritual impurity so much as because she was a liturgical vessel, and it was appropriate to cleanse suchlike after use.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he should not see death
before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
There is so much we can learn from Simeon. Many of us see the value of our lives in terms of the contributions we can make to the world. Because of this most of us never achieve anything so great that we are able to "go" and meet death with peace of heart. We generally have an aching sense of something to do that we have left undone, some way we might finally prove our value. We don't know what Simeon had managed to accomplish in his life until that point. It sounded from his song that he did not expect to do much else. But he was not crushed or even sad because of his apparent lack of usefulness. Rather, the value of his life was predicated for him on something other than his contributions. Thus, it was enough for him to see God's promises fulfilled, and to touch the one who fulfilled them gave his life its full measure of value.
Why was Simeon able to find his entire fulfillment in Jesus when we ourselves can't seem to do so? We have the vague sense that we should, but we still seem to need so much else besides. We receive Jesus, far more than did Simeon, in his gift of himself to us in the Eucharist. Yet most of us don't feel such an overwhelming sense of fulfillment that we sense that our whole existence has somehow been justified in the event. The difference, perhaps, between Simeon in ourselves, was that Simeon lived a life of waiting for the Lord, led by the Holy Spirit. He hadn't decided the purpose of his own life. He had learned it by listening to the Spirit. And the Spirit guided him through a long process of waiting to see that purpose accomplished. We too can live like that, making ourselves ever more ready to find our fulfillment in the Lord. But we too often choose to accept alternatives and substitutes when the joy of the presence of the Lord is not available on demand. We dull our spiritual senses with these substitutes such that when we do receive him we don't full recognize the magnitude of the gift.
Jesus is the light of the world, meant to reveal God to the nations. And, as John reminds us, "the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining". Yet the light of Christ is often obscured, and this in large measure because those who call themselves Christians don't fully radiate that light, since whoever "hates his brother, is still in the darkness", even if he claims to be in the light. We have said it before, but it is worth repeating: we can't claim to love God if we refuse to love the creatures he has made in his image. But the more we allow God to empower us to love beyond our normal human limitations the more his own divine power will be revealed. This can't come about without opposition or contradiction. But fortunately, for us as for Simeon, it isn't about what we bring to the table nearly so much as what we ourselves receive from the Lord. That is what we need to learn to value, and to treasure. Then we too may one day experience peace of heart like Simeon when God at last calls us home.
No comments:
Post a Comment