Today’s readings: Genesis 15,1-6.21,1-3; Colossians 3,12-21; Luke 2, 22-40.
The highlight of today’s gospel is Simeon, an upright and devout man in Jerusalem, looking forward to Israel’s comforting. When Mary and Joseph brought the child Jesus in the temple, he was “prompted by the Spirit”, took the child in his arms and knew for sure that his eyes were seeing what he had been expecting for so long. He knew how to wait for God, and when the right moment came his eyes could actually see, and he touched with his hands, God’s glory.
When we synchronise our heart’s deepest desires with the Spirit’s promptings, like Simeon, we will have eyes penetrating enough to see beyond what a superficial reading of reality tells us. This is what we need so much in our days when we often feel lost and are easily misled in our reading of the times.
Jesus, as proclaimed by Simeon, continues to be a sign of contradiction, the fall and rise of many. His mercy is scandalous, as some say. His message sounds so true, yet we choose to follow other truths; many claim to believe in him, without ever becoming his true disciples; his words often bring solace to the heart, yet for many of us they remain simply words, never becoming flesh.
He is so near and yet so distant. It is up to us whether to choose to be and remain in his presence. Throughout 2020, we rediscovered ourselves so fragile in the world which we imagined more secure. Yet through a discerning wisdom, that same fragility, instead of shattering, can be revealing and can become a source of inner strength to rediscover what makes our relationships true and to realise how our glorified globalisation is simply robbing us of depth in our way of being with others.
As the 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal observes, in the world there is light enough to believe and darkness enough not to believe. We can be prophets of doom or prophets of glad tidings. It depends on how we look on things, what we permit our eyes to see, and to what extent we let ourselves be led by the promptings of the Spirit.
This is precisely where the Spirit is guiding us even today, like it did with Simeon. Both the times we live in and the message of Christmas these days should guide us in the maze which at times is so confusing. The central message of Christmas is that the word became flesh so that we are no longer prisoners of our human condition.
As St Paul exhorts in today’s second reading: “Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you”. The word of God continues to become flesh in the here and now of each era, including ours, which we may judge so alien to the transcendent but which undoubtedly has its own sacred spaces and openings to God’s Spirit.
Failing to remain open to God’s future will simply rob us of any sense of expectation, except for the daily desires we stick to. Simeon, addressing Mary and proclaiming Jesus as the salvation for all nations to see, speaks also of the “sword that will pierce your soul” – as if to say the birth of Jesus as saviour was not a point of arrival but a departure. There is never an end to the depth of insight God enables in us.
The Spirit gives us the ability to see, like Simeon, what is not so evident but which God makes true and tangible despite how we judge the times we live in. This sounds contradictory, and Jesus is the sign of this contradiction in all times and ages, enabling us to still find meaning in celebrating him as the one who gives solace to our heart and responds to our deepest aspirations.