The Fifth Day in the
Octave of Christmas
December 29, 2014 8:30am
This morning, I am taken with
this man Simeon in the gospel passage.
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 this promised one of God.
Perhaps it was his prayerfulness
that gave him patience.
We might take note of that, since
I often think that impatience is 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, expected and wanted a political and militaristic Messiah.
They wanted a Messiah who would bring
them greatness and power, vanquish their enemies and overthrow all darkness or
whatever the 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 there is another lesson
here for us.
Some today seem, in effect, to
want that political and mighty Savior.
With good intentions, they speak
words of disdain for others whose ways they judge as bad.
They even speak of warfare,
spiritual warfare, a term which I think is very unfortunate for many reasons.
In the name of truth, they
violate Saint John’s call in the first reading to be loving persons if we are
really to be persons of Christ.
So maybe Simon’s person leads us
away from anything like that.
He leads us to be prayerful and
patient, and to promote the light of the Lord – as Saint John says in the first
reading – to promote this in respectful and peaceful words and expressions and
ways.
That is the lesson I see in this
man Simeon today.
