Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace

1Jn 2,3-11; Ps 95,1-3.6; Lk 2,22-35.
29 DECEMBER

From the first moment of his conception, the life of Jesus is taken over by the Holy Spirit. It is he who has generated it in the womb of the Virgin Mary and it is also He who must generate it in every other heart. If the Spirit cannot enter into a heart, because it is in sin and there is no will of conversion, that heart will remain forever without Christ Jesus. If there is a narrow opening, even a tiny slit for Him to enter, he always generates Christ Jesus and salvation is accomplished, on condition that that heart will bring to completion its full maturation and growth as the true body of its Redeemer and Saviour. In the New Covenant the Holy Spirit must be brought and given to the heart through the proclamation of the Word by the disciple of Jesus. Given as the Spirit of conversion, then he will be given by the Apostles of the Lord as the Spirit of sanctification, regeneration and new birth, for a perfect conformation to Christ in life and in death. Simeon is a righteous man. The Spirit can enter his heart. He enters and announces him that he would not have seen death before having met the Christ of God, his Messiah. A promise never made to any other man. Jesus is brought to the temple of Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit leads Simeon into the house of God and makes him recognize among the many children who his Christ, his Messiah is. He takes him in his arms and blesses the Lord for this very high grace. Now he can die in peace. Nothing on earth has value for him anymore. His life has reached full satiety. He saw the expected of the Gentiles, the salvation of God prepared by Him before all peoples, the light that will have to reveal the true God to the world, the glory of his people, Israel. Simeon knows who Jesus is. He knows his truth. He has the perfect science of his mission. This very pure light comes to him from the Spirit of God.

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,” and to offer the sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,” in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted  (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Now it is right for everyone to question his conscience and respond with great honesty. Do we know who Jesus is? Do we have the perfect science of his divine and human truth? Do we know what his mission is? Do we have a faith so perfect as to confess that only He is the Christ of God and nobody else? Do we believe that He is the only name given by God in which it is established that we can be saved? Are we still convinced that each of His Word is a prophecy that is always fulfilled on earth and in the heavens? It is right to cry out that the Christian today no longer has this faith in Christ the Lord. Since the whole truth of the Church is from the truth of Christ and the whole truth of man is from the truth of the Church, if true faith in Christ falls, true faith in the Church falls, true faith in the salvation to offer to man falls, which is salvation in Christ, with Christ and for Christ. What is the way for true faith in Christ to be witnessed to the Gentiles? It is only one: that which Jesus suggests us in the Book of the Apocalypse of the Apostle John: “Let the saint be more sanctified”. Let whoever believes, never cease to believe, rather may he grow from faith to faith and witness Christ, confessing him before men in his ever purer truth. Today it is the individual who is responsible, without and with others, always and everywhere.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, make us witness to the purest truth and faith in Jesus.