“…it had been revealed to Simeon by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26)
Time and again in the Gospels there come forward on the stage of history hitherto unknown characters who, after playing their brief but memorable part, withdraw and vanish in the background of Our Lord’s earthly life.
Such a one was the aged Simeon. Whether his home was in Jerusalem or whether he visited the city from time to time we do not know, but he was an upright and godly man, just and devout and possessed of a tremendous hope and faith: for we are told he was waiting for the consolation of Israel – for the coming, that is, of the Saviour King, the Christ, whom the prophets of old had foretold. Those prophets had long ago died, and many a generation since had passed away without their prophecies and hopes being fulfilled. Yet in spite of these centuries of disappointment which stretched back from his own days, the hope of seeing the Christ burnt steadily and brightly in Simeon’s heart.
Then came the revelation from God which to this trusting soul turned hope into certainty. Where or when Simeon would see the Christ he did not know, but he did know that the waiting and the search of a lifetime were nearing their end.
One of those insistent promptings by the Holy Spirit, which this devout man was always alert to sense and quick to act upon, led him to the temple a short time before Mary and Joseph brought the infant Christ to present him to the Lord. Simeon knew by an inward conviction that this was the Christ, that the moment up to which his life had been leading had been reached and his long quest was over.
Then Simeon took the child in his arms and said, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation…” (Luke 2:29,30). He had found Christ and so, with his life’s object fulfilled, there was nothing to detain the old man on earth any longer.
Not however for Simeon only, but for you and me and for every soul whom God puts into the world, is this life a quest, a search to find Christ.
So many believe and act as though this life has no particular purpose, or at any rate one purpose for this person and another for that according to his or her ability and place and opportunity. Yet when we stand aside and watch human life flow past, we see that in the end it resolves itself into a matter of the soul and God. Our ability and place and opportunity are the setting in which we have to gain our ultimate goal and that is the same for all – to find Christ here so that we may possess him for ever hereafter: to find One whom now we cannot see but only know.
Simeon was a devout man and that was why Christ came to him. He had gone up according to his custom to the temple and while he was there the Holy Child came in. So it is that we find Christ only after beginning the life of devotion and, in response to that turning of the soul and directing of the will to him, he comes to meet us. It is he, who by the promptings of the Holy Spirit, stirs us to desire him and then, having done this, he waits for us to take the next step. And that step is the one that few people can bring themselves to make – to hand themselves over to Our Blessed Lord completely and utterly, making a gift to him of all the years they still have to live, so that for the future he will be their sole and absolute owner in all they think and say and do.
It is when people give themselves like that to Christ that they find him and then, with a growing intensity, they are aware in all their waking moments of Christ’s gracious Presence; just as one is aware of the sun on a summer’s day.
To find Christ: three simple words of one syllable. To those who have never really sought him, whose attention is focused on or occupied with worldly things, to them these three words must remain altogether a meaningless phrase, signifying nothing.
But to those who have found him, they sum up their religious experience so that, though they cannot explain it or communicate it, yet they know it as surely as one knows it is day.
To love Our Blessed Lord and to know his love in return is something which no one can describe. Individuals must learn and find it for themselves, but they will do that only after they have devoted themselves wholly and unreservedly to Our Lord and, by the life of Sacrament and prayer, become more deeply and inextricably united to him.
“O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
to those who ask, how kind thou art,
how good to those who seek!
But what to those who find? Ah, this
no tongue or pen can show;
the love of Jesus, what it is
none but his loved ones know”. (1) (our emphasis)
Reference
1. Latin, 12th century, trans. Caswall, E. (1849) Jesus, the very thought of thee. Available from:
http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/TWC/112 (Accessed 11 January 2012) (Internet).