What is the Spiritual Meaning of the Feast of the
Meeting of the Lord? Why did the meeting of Elder Simeon
with the Infant Jesus become a great Christian feast day?
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) talks about today’s
feast.
The
event that initiated this one of the twelve great
feasts is, in the spiritual sense, multi-dimensional.
The word “meeting” does not convey the
main significance of the
Church Slavonic understanding of
sretenie. Ordinarily those who meet are
equals. “But here,” as
Metropolitan Benjamin (Fedchenkov) notes,
“the Slavonic word, sretenie,
is more fitting, for it speaks of the coming out of the
lesser to meet the greater; of people coming to meet
God” (Letters on the Twelve Great
Feasts [Moscow, 2004], 170-1 [Russian]). The
event in the
Jerusalem temple has particular significance.
The Divine Law-Giver Himself, as the firstborn of every
creature (Col. 1:15) and as the firstborn
of the Virgin (Mt. 1:25) is brought as a gift to
God. This symbolic act is as if the beginning of that
service, which would end on earth with a great event: the
incarnate Son of God would offer His whole self to God for
the redemption of mankind, with whom he had earlier met in
the person of righteous Simeon. For mine eyes
have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before
the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and the glory of thy people Israel (Lk.
2:30-32). This song of thanksgiving goes back in thought
and expression to certain passages in the book of the
Prophet Isaiah: And in that day there shall be
a root of Jesse, and he that shall arise to rule over the
Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust, and his rest
shall be glorious (Is. 11:10). Jesse was the
father of King David. Therefore, the Root of
Jesse—the people’s awaited Messiah
Christ, the Son of David (cf. Mt.
1:1), Who, as two centuries of history shows, will become
a a sign which shall be spoken against.
This sign will divide people
into the believing and the unbelieving, into those who
love the light and those who choose darkness. “What
is this sign which shall be spoken
against? It is the Sign of the Cross, which the
Church will confess as salvific for the whole world”
(St.
John Chrysostom).
The meeting of God and man, which first took place in the
Jerusalem temple, must become for each of us a personal
event. Our path of salvation must begin by a meeting with
Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. Until this meeting
takes place, we remain sitting in darkness… and
in the shadow of death (Mt. 4:16).
On the fortieth day after the Birth of the Infant God, yet
another meeting took place—the
Old Testament Church and the New Testament Church. The
entire Gospel passage is penetrated with the motif of
exact fulfillment of the law of Moses: the forty-day
period of purification prescribed in the book of
Leviticus (cf. 12:2-4), the dedication of the firstborn
son to God (cf. Num. 3:13), and that firstborn son’s
symbolic redemption (Ex. 13:13). Nevertheless, it is easy
to see that the spiritual center of the event described is
completely transferred into New Testament history.
Now (Lk. 2:29) means that the time awaited by
many generations of the coming of the Messiah has arrived.
Holy righteous Simeon speaks of the departure from this
world (the verb depart in the Greek and Slavonic
texts is in the present tense). The elder Simeon’s
inspired speech is filled with praise and thanksgiving to
God that the time of promise is now fulfilled. According
to patristic tradition, the holy
Prophet Zacharias, father of
St. John the Baptist, placed the Holy Virgin who came
according to the law to fulfill the rite not in the place
designated for women there for purification, but in the
place designated for virgins (women who had husbands were
not allowed to stand there). And when the scribes and
Pharisees expressed their indignation, Zacharias
proclaimed that this Mother remains and will remain a
Virgin and pure: “Therefore I have not forbidden
this Mother to stand in the place appointed for virgins,
because She is higher than all virgins.”
The
third meeting is of an extremely personal character.
For the elder Simeon, the day has come for which he
had waited an unusually long time. He was promised to
see the Savior of the world, born of the Most Pure
Virgin Mary. Righteous Simeon, distinguished by his
brilliant learnedness, as a wise man who knew the
Divine Scripture very well, labored together with
seventy-two translators on the island of Pharos in
Alexandria in the 380’s B.C. over the
translation of the
books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek.
While translating the book of the Prophet Isaiah, he came
to the words, Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the
womb, and shall bring forth a son (Is. 7:14). When he
read this, he doubted, thinking that it was impossible for
a woman to give birth without a husband. Simeon took a
knife and wanted to erase these words from the scroll and
replace “virgin” with “woman”. But
then an angel of the Lord appeared to him stayed his hand,
saying, “Have faith in the words written, and you
yourself will behold their fulfillment, for you shall not
see death until you have seen the Lord Christ born of a
virgin.” Believing the angels words, the elder
Simeon waited impatiently for Christ’s coming into
the world, and led a righteous and blameless life.
According to tradition, elder Simeon was vouchsafed a
blessed end in the 360th year of his life. His holy relics
were translated during the reign of Emperor Justinian the
Younger (565-578) to Constantinople and placed in the
chapel of the Apostle Jacob of the Chalkoprateia church.
The prayer of St. Simeon the God-Receiver (now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart, O Master) is sung (on feast
days) or read (during simple services) every evening, so
that the passing day would remind every believer of the
sunset of his life, which ends with his departure from
this temporary life. We must live our lives in peace with
God and fulfillment of the Gospel commandments, so that
like the holy elder Simeon, we might joyfully greet the
endless and bright day in the Kingdom of Heaven.
