The Fifth Day in the
Octave of Christmas
December 29, 2015 6:30am
This morning, I am taken with
Simeon in the gospel that I just read.
I see in Simeon a prayerful and
patient person.
The passage says that he is led
by the Holy Spirit to come to the temple.
So he comes across as a person
with an inner life, attuned to God and living in relationship with God.
Besides this prayerfulness, he
comes across as patient.
He has been waiting probably for
years to see the promised one of God.
Perhaps it was his prayerfulness
that gave him patience.
We might take note of that, since
impatience seems to be one of the real issues or problems in our culture today.
Perhaps more rootedness in prayer
would give us more patience.
Some of Simeon’s contemporaries,
maybe most of them, wanted a political and militaristic Messiah.
They wanted a Messiah who would bring
them greatness and power, a Messiah who would vanquish their enemies and
overthrow all darkness or whatever they judged as dark.
Simeon, a prayerful and patient
person, saw the Savior in this child – vulnerable, powerless in worldly terms, and
peaceful.
His contemporaries could not see
this and we all know what eventually happened to Jesus because of that.
Maybe that leads us to one more insight.
The prayerfulness and patience of
Simeon, and his ability to see the Savior in Jesus, call us look for the good
and see God where God is.
Simeon calls us to identify the
Savior’s presence in a positive way.
This old, faithful and
faith-filled man does not curse darkness.
He is not waging what is
sometimes called spiritual warfare and is so misguided.
Instead, as Saint John lifts up
in today’s first reading, Simeon looks for the light and points it out.
He seems to have the wisdom to
know that this is the way for our Savior, for Jesus to emerge in our world.
This is the way for light to be
seen and accepted and little by little to spread and permeate all persons and
all life situations.
