4th Day of Christmas: Holy Innocents and St. Anthony of Lerins

 Merry Christmas! The Christmas season is well upon us, and today we see it in all its complexity: we’re still singing carols and chiming bells, while at the same time recoiling from the horror of King Herod’s mass infanticide at Bethlehem, as commemorated in today’s Feast of the Holy Innocents.  Today’s feast reminds us not only of enormities committed against innocent life in our own day, but also that the baby lying in the wooden manger has escaped Herod’s wrath only so that he might die thirty years later on the wooden beams of the cross.

St. Anthony of Lerins

    In past years my 4th Day of Christmas post has been a meditation on the Holy Innocents (here and here, for instance), but this year I’m taking a different approach: as I said in my post on St. Servulus two days before Christmas, lesser observances are often overwhelmed during great celebrations such as Christmas and Easter.  There are, in fact other saints commemorated today, whose memory can be completely buried under the combined weight of the Feast of the Holy Innocents and the ongoing celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord. One of those, St. Anthony of Lerins (also known as St. Anthony the Hermit), will be my main focus today.

   As it happens, St. Anthony would probably be just as happy to be ignored, if his life here on earth is any indication. He born in the year 468 AD at Valeria in the region that the Romans had called Lower Pannonia, but which at this time was controlled by the Huns. He grew up among holy men: he lived for a time with St. Severinus of Noricum after his father died in Anthony’s ninth year; when St. Severinus himself died a few years later, Anthony moved to the household of his uncle Constantius, who was the bishop of Lorsch in what is now Bavaria. When he reached adulthood he became a hermit in the area of Lake Como in northern Italy.  As is often the case with holy hermits, his sanctity attracted a large number of followers. Seeking to recapture a little of the solitude for which he embraced the eremitical life, Anthony moved on from there, eventually settling in Lerins in France, where he spent his final two years on earth . . . and where the would-be recluse became famous throughout the district for sanctity and miracle-working.

    In the story of St. Anthony of Lerins we see a couple of themes that connect him to today’s commemoration of the Holy Innocents, and to the Child in the manger in whose honor we are celebrating this entire liturgical season.  St. Paul tells us in his Second Letter to the Corinthians:

[The Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

"The Adoration of the Shepherds", by Matthias Stomer

We see God’s propensity to work his power through weakness throughout salvation history, most clearly when the infinite Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word, manifests himself in this world as a tiny baby lying in a feeding trough in a stable.  We also see it in helplessness of the Holy Innocents slaughtered at Bethlehem, and in the life of a simple man who wanted nothing more than to live a life of holiness with his Lord. Notice on this day when we commemorate the sacrifice of those children, and the sanctity of St. Anthony, that the power of King Herod who brought so much destruction to the little boys of Bethlehem, and of the fearsome Huns under whose rule Anthony was born, has long since disappeared; their names have become little more than bywords for cruelty and violence.

King Herod

    It’s not that the power of the Herods, Huns, and other worldly tyrants has had no lasting effect: it’s just that it doesn’t accomplish what they expect it to.  St. Paul again provides us with the key when he says: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) We see this idea applied in the non-scriptural passage in today’s Office of Readings, a homily by St. Quodvultdeus (his name means “What God wills” in Latin) on the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, in which he addresses King Herod:

Yet your throne is threatened by the source of grace – so small, yet so great – who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil.  He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.

God makes all things work for the good of those who love him, including the evil machinations of wicked men like Herod.  How much more so, then, the good things in the life of a holy man like St. Anthony of Lerins? God gives us his gifts not so much for our own sake, but so that we might use them in the service of others, to help free their souls, as the homilist above puts it, from captivity to the devil. St. Anthony was seeking a quiet life of prayer and contemplation, but God gave him the grace to desire such a life, and the power to perform miracles, so that he might sanctify the people among whom he was living.  Let us all pray for the grace to likewise embrace God’s gifts to us, and to use them for What God Wills.

The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents inspired a number of songs during the Middle Ages, of which only the Coventry Carol is still commonly heard today.  Below is a haunting version of this beautiful song by the Irish vocal group Anúna:

3rd Day of Christmas: The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Today, the Solemnity of the Holy Family, commemorates the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but also reminds us that “the family” in general, composed of father, mother, and children, is itself “holy”, a gift of God.  St. Paul underscores the sanctity of the family itself in his letter to the Ephesians:

 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31-32)

"The Flight Into Egypt" by Bartolome Murillo

Devotion to the Holy Family had been growing for some time, but the formal feast was not established until 1921, in response to increasing threats to the integrity of the family as traditionally understood.  The trends that already looked alarming a century ago have now grown and metastasized in ways that would have astounded our great grandparents. The family as traditionally understood is tottering under open and sustained attack.

It is in this regard that we see an interesting connection to tomorrow's Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates King Herod’s slaughter of all the male children up to two years old in Bethlehem after he learned from the Magi that the Messiah had recently been born there.  The two different feasts, in fact, are really different sides of the same coin.  Where the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus is a model of God’s plan for the family, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents underscores how far we fall short, right now, of that model.  It is likewise noteworthy that one of the few places in Scripture where we see the Holy Family in action is the same passage from Matthew’s Gospel that describes the Holy Innocents:

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they [the Magi] departed to their own country by another way. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son." Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:12 -16)

Guido Reni, "St. Joseph With The Infant Jesus"

Joseph, like fathers and fatherhood itself today (and the crisis of the family is, to a great degree, a crisis of fatherhood), is often overlooked and forgotten. We know from Matthew’s Gospel, however, that God saw to it that his son would have a human father when he was born (see Matthew 1:18-25).  In the passage from Luke above he is clearly the leader of the family.  Like his Old Testament namesake, and the Wise Men from the East, he is warned in a dream, and takes action: he has the vision to guide and protect his family.

Even our separated brethren in the Protestant communities, who have sometimes feared that our devotion to the earthly parents of Jesus might distract us from the Savior Himself, are coming to a new appreciation of the example of St. Joseph.  In a recent post I quoted Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who said:

For several years, I’ve been convinced that the model we most need in this day is that of Joseph of Nazareth. In a day when fathers are seen as expendable, we should look at Joseph, who sacrificed his own future for his wife and child. In a world filled with orphans in need of families, we should look at the example of this adopting father who poured out himself to become a father to one who was of no biological relation to him.

The family in our day and age is badly in need of guidance and protection.  On this Feast of the Holy Family, we would do well to pray for the intercession of the head and guardian of that Family, that he help our own families, and the institution of the family throughout the world.

Music for the Feast of the Holy Family: "Once in Royal David's City" by The Seekers

 

2nd Day of Christmas: St. Stephen, Good King Wenceslas & The Power of Christ's Love

 Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Soft and crisp and even

 

Today, the Second Day of Christmas, we (like King Wenceslas in the well-known carol quoted above) celebrate the Feast of St. Stephen.  The song does not actually tell us anything about Stephen himself: it describes instead how Good King Wenceslas goes out on the saint’s day, in an act of Christian charity, to share his Christmas bounty with a lonely and poverty-stricken old peasant.  And, whether or not the incident recounted in the song ever happened, Wenceslas himself was real.  He is based on Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia (the title of king was conferred on him posthumously by Holy Roman Emperor Otto I after his death in 935 AD). Wenceslas’ grandfather was the first Christian duke of Bohemia, but it was Wenceslas himself who firmly established the Church in Bohemia in the face of still strong pagan opposition, and aligned the church in his homeland with the Holy See in Rome.   

    Wenceslas stands at the beginning of Christianity among the Czechs. Likewise, St. Stephen’s feast is at the start of the Christmas season, and St. Stephen himself at the very beginning of the Church; he was, in fact, the first Christian to give his life for the Faith after Christ himself, for which reason he is known as the protomartyr, that is, first martyr. We find a vivid account of his death in the Acts of the Apostles:

But he [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

And Saul was consenting to his death.  (Acts 7:55-8:1)

The Stoning of St. Stephen, by Paolo Uccello

    Just as our Christmas joy is tempered by the realization that the child lying in the manger must someday hang on the Cross, St. Stephen reminds us, a mere day after the Feast of the Nativity itself, that following the Child of Bethlehem can mean our own Calvary.  Jesus himself tells us: “"Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11).  How is it, then, that his coming is “Good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10)? Because, as our Lord goes on to say, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). Indeed, as we see in the account above from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Stephen doesn’t go to his death wailing and gnashing his teeth at the cruelty and injustice of it all, but gazing joyfully on his Savior in Heaven, and begging for forgiveness for his persecutors.  Countless martyrs since have done the same, up to the present day.  Christ our Savior didn’t come to save us from unpleasantness in this world, but to save for eternal happiness with him in the next, by rescuing us from our own sin.

    Which brings us back to Good King Wenceslas, who has more in common with St. Stephen than we might at first realize. It’s true that he established a strong foundation for the Church, and exhibited exemplary personal piety and charity; it is also the case that not everyone appreciated those qualities, including other nobles still sympathetic to paganism, as well as his brother Boleslav, who treacherously murdered him.  

    At the time, it must have seemed that Wenceslas was the loser, and that his scheming brother had won, just as St. Stephen seemed to be vanquished by his persecutors.  Today, however, over one thousand years later, Good King Wenceslas is still loved by the Czechs, and remembered as one of the founders of their nation, while his brother carries the odious sobriquet Boleslav "the Cruel."  Of more significance than his worldly reputation is the fact that Wenceslas is remembered by the Church as Saint Wenceslas, Martyr, whose feast we celebrate on September 28th. Saints Stephen and Wenceslas stand together among the "white-robed army of martyrs" whom we see in the ancient prayer known as the Te Deum, gathered before the throne of God, praising their Creator, and interceding for all of us.

 

   “Good King Wenceslas” is considered a Christmas carol, although it does not seem to have any direct reference to the Nativity of Our Lord.  It does, however, encourage us to emulate the saints, such as Stephen and Wenceslas, who conformed themselves to Christ, especially as exemplars of Christ's love [see St. Fulgentius of Ruspe's sermon from today's Office of Readings: St. Stephen - The Armor of Love]. The words with which St. Wenceslas encourages his cold and frightened page in the carol could easily be spoken by Christ himself, and addressed to every one of us:

"Mark my footsteps, good my page

Tread thou in them boldly

Thou shall find the winter's rage

Freeze thy blood less coldly."

Merry Christmas!

Anthony Warlow  O Holy Night  1991

The Christmas Conversion of St.Thérèse

 In the lives of the Saints we can find some amazing stories of conversion: the Risen Lord literally knocking his persecutor Saul to ground and blinding him, in order to raise him up as St. Paul; the rich and spoiled son of an Italian cloth merchant who needed a year in a dungeon as a POW followed by a near fatal illness before he cast off self-indulgence to become St. Francis of Assissi; the vain and vainglorious Spanish nobleman who had his leg nearly shot off with a cannonball, and then went through months of excruciating recovery, before he could begin to see God in All Things as St. Ignatius of Loyola.  How startlingly different, and yet how strikingly the same is the conversion of the little French girl Thérèse Martin, now St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, as she tells it her autobiographical Story of A Soul: 

     I had a constant and ardent desire to advance in virtue, but often my actions were spoilt by imperfections. My extreme sensitiveness made me almost unbearable. All arguments were useless. I simply could not correct myself of this miserable fault. . .  A miracle on a small scale was needed to give me strength of character all at once, and God worked this long-desired miracle on Christmas Day, 1886. . . 

     Now I will tell you, dear Mother, how I received this inestimable grace of complete conversion. I knew that when we reached home after Midnight Mass I should find my shoes in the chimney-corner, filled with presents, just as when I was a little child, which proves that my sisters still treated me as a baby. Papa, too, liked to watch my enjoyment and hear my cries of delight at each fresh surprise that came from the magic shoes, and his pleasure added to mine. But the time had come when Our Lord wished to free me from childhood's failings, and even withdraw me from its innocent pleasures. On this occasion, instead of indulging me as he generally did, Papa seemed vexed, and on my way upstairs I heard him say: "Really all this is too babyish for a big girl like Thérèse, and I hope it is the last year it will happen." His words cut me to the quick. Céline, knowing how sensitive I was, whispered: "Don't go downstairs just yet—wait a little, you would cry too much if you looked at your presents before Papa." But Thérèse was no longer the same—Jesus had changed her heart.

     Choking back my tears, I ran down to the dining-room, and, though my heart beat fast, I picked up my shoes, and gaily pulled out all the things, looking as happy as a queen. Papa laughed, and did not show any trace of displeasure, and Céline thought she must be dreaming. But happily it was a reality; little Thérèse had regained, once for all, the strength of mind which she had lost at the age of four and a half.

     On this night of grace, the third period of my life began—the most beautiful of all, the one most filled with heavenly favours. In an instant Our Lord, satisfied with my good will, accomplished the work I had not been able to do during all these years. Like the Apostle I could say: "Master, we have laboured all night, and have taken nothing."

     More merciful to me even than to His beloved disciples, Our Lord Himself took the net, cast it, and drew it out full of fishes. He made me a fisher of men. Love and a spirit of self-forgetfulness took possession of me, and from that time I was perfectly happy.

The Lord didn’t need to knock Thérèse down, beat her up, or have her shot in order to get her full attention; all he needed was to allow her to overhear a couple of stray comments from the father she loved so dearly.  That wounded her deeply enough to reveal to her the reality of her own selfishness, and to open her up completely to Christ’s Grace.  The meaning of conversion, after all, is to “turn around”, away from a way of life dictated by our own desires to one truly centered on God.

     Now, most of us need a wake-up more like the one which was granted to St. Paul or St. Francis; perhaps not quite as dramatic, but most of us, I suspect, are much more wrapped up in our sin than was little Thérèse Martin.  But that is precisely why the Little Flower’s conversion stands out: even someone who seems to be doing just about everything right is still in need of conversion, and not just in one instant, but continuously over a lifetime (and of course she did experience much greater suffering later in her short life). Sin will always be trying to turn us back. 

     St. Thérèse’s conversion story reminds us of something else.  There will always be opportunities for conversion.  We don’t need to go out looking for trouble, because we will all have ample opportunity to experience The Fall in our lives.  The more enmeshed we are in sin, however, and the higher the walls between ourselves and God, the harder our fall must be.  Wouldn’t it be better to come to Christ like Thérèse did, without too much collateral damage to ourselves and to others?

     Finally, on Christmas Day in 1886 St. Thérèse learned to turn her hurt and disappointment into generosity of spirit, her selfishness to selflessness.  What a wonderful reminder to all of us (myself very much included) that we need to ask our Lord for the Grace to do the same. O come, O come Emmanuel!

St. Servulus, Tiny Tim, and the Nativity of Our Lord

 

One understandable drawback to the great liturgical feasts, such as the magnificent celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord at Christmas, is that lesser observances can be overlooked in all the excitement. For instance, one of today’s Saints, St. Servulus: he is worth remembering for his own sake, but his life also gives us some very fruitful matter for meditation on the penultimate day of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas itself. Let’s take a look at the story of St. Servulus, from the 1894 edition of Butler’s Lives of the Saints (an account based on a homily by St. Gregory the Great):

December 23.—ST. SERVULUS

SERVULUS was a beggar, and had been so afflicted with palsy from his infancy that he was never able to stand, sit upright, lift his hand to his mouth, or turn himself from one side to another. His mother and brother carried him into the porch of St. Clement's Church at Rome, where he lived on the alms of those that passed by. He used to entreat devout persons to read the Holy Scriptures to him, which he heard with such attention as to learn them by heart. His time he consecrated by assiduously singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God. After several years thus spent, his distemper having seized his vitals, he felt his end was drawing nigh. In his last moments he desired the poor and pilgrims, who had often shared in his charity, to sing sacred hymns and psalms for him. While he joined his voice with theirs, he on a sudden cried out: "Silence! do you not hear the sweet melody and praise which resound in the heavens?" Soon after he spoke these words he expired, and his soul was carried by angels into everlasting bliss, about the year 590.

St. Servulus listens to Holy Scripture

Servulus is certainly an admirable model of heroic virtue.  In spite of a lifetime of constant suffering, he was filled with gratitude to his Creator, and was completely devoted to Him, as signified by his name (Servulus means “little slave”). Moreover, despite his own absolute poverty, he was keenly aware of the need of others.

   But there’s more to the story of this saint and his feast day, coming as it does right before the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord.  When I first read Servulus’ hagiography, in fact, a passage from Charles Dickens immediately came to mind.  I was thinking of the scene in A Christmas Carol, where the Ghost of Christmas Present is showing Scrooge the Cratchit family’s Christmas dinner.  Scrooge’s underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, has just returned from church with his sickly, crippled son Tiny Tim on Christmas day.  After Tim is whisked off by his siblings to see “the pudding singing in the copper”, Bob has the following exchange with his wife:“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Bob Cratchit & Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim sees himself as a living image of Christ’s mercy, reminding the faithful that the Nativity they’re celebrating is not just the birth of a baby, but the Incarnation of the God of Mercy as a Man. St. Servulus is also an icon, pointing out precisely who the Babe in the manger has come to be. He reminds us that in taking on human flesh, Jesus is taking to himself all that is human, excepting sin.  That very emphatically includes human suffering. It is often said that when God took on human form, he sanctified humanity.
Likewise, since Jesus has participated in our pain and sorrow, through his suffering we can unite ourselves to the living God. St. Servulus puts flesh on the words of St. Paul: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions (Colossians 1:24).”  Small wonder that the suffering saint could hear the voices of angels even before he left this world for the next.
    In two days we will be celebrating Christmas, the birth of our Savior, which is indeed, as the angels tell the shepherds of Bethlehem, “good news of a great joy” (Luke 2:10).  St. Servulus reminds us that He comes not so much to save us from the hardships of this world, but to save us through those hardships, so that we can be eternally happy with Him in the next.
    May your Christmas be a merry one . . . and God Bless Us, Every One.

The Presentation and God's Strong Hand

"Moses Striking the Rock", by Francesco Bacchiacca

    Today in the secular world (at least in the United States) we observe the venerable tradition of Groundhog Day, which involves allowing an earth-dwelling rodent to forecast our weather for the next few weeks. It's just a fun bit of nonsense, and yet it receives an enormous amount of attention.
The Church, as we should expect, has something much more substantial for us. Today, forty days after the birth of Jesus at Christmas, we observe the Feast of the Presentation, in which we commemorate Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to consecrate Him to God, as was the Jewish custom with first-born sons. In this event we can see how, as St. Augustine put it, the New Covenant in the Old is concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed; similarly, we can catch a glimpse of the whole of the life and mission of Jesus on earth, from beginning to end.
Let's start with the depiction of the event in Luke 2:22-40, the Gospel reading at today’s Mass, which begins as follows:

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph took Jesus 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.  (Luke 2:22-24)

The passage from Exodus to which Luke refers above appears in today’s Office of Readings.  There we see the origin of the mandate that Jewish families offer up their eldest male child to the Lord:

And when the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstlings of your cattle that are males shall be the LORDs. Every firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every first-born of man among your sons you shall redeem. And when in time to come your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him, 'By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD slew all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and the first-born of cattle. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all the males that first open the womb; but all the first-born of my sons I redeem.'  (Exodus 13:11-15)

   The injunction to consecrate the first-born males sends a powerful, and serious, message: that the chosen people were saved not through any virtue of their own, but through the favor, and by the power, of God.  By dedicating to the Lord their eldest sons, who will someday become the head of their families, they are putting God at the head of every family.  It is a reminder that future generations are in God’s hands as much as the generation that he liberated from Egypt.

   As we commemorate the Presentation of Jesus, we might also want to consider the passage above in its larger context in the Book of Exodus.  The Hebrews have been released by Pharaoh, but their struggle is just beginning; they have a long road ahead of them.  Here are the verses that immediately follow the reading in today’s Office:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt." But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle. (Exodus 13:17-18)

The Israelites will not be able to simply walk in and take up residence in the land the Lord is giving them; they will need to fight, but God knows they’re not ready for that yet.  Before that time they will be prepared and tempered by a close escape from Pharaoh’s army (again, only by the “strength of the hand the LORD”), and forty years of struggle and hardship in the Sinai desert, punctuated by transcendent reminders of God’s Grace (Manna, Water from the Rock, the Ten Commandments).  God makes his Grace available, but the recipients are expected to cooperate actively with it.

   Now let’s look at Luke’s Gospel.  God has shown his strong hand again, in the birth of Jesus, the firstborn (and only born) son of The Father.  The Holy Family encounters a prophetic old man in the Temple named Simeon, who says:

       Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word;

for mine eyes have seen thy salvation

which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

and for glory to thy people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32)

And yet, as was the case with the escape from Egypt, this is only the beginning.  He also tells Mary:

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)

"The Presentation", Hans Holbein the Elder

Simeon says that he can die content now after seeing the Savior, but also reveals that, here as in Moses’s day, salvation can only come after trial and suffering.

   We can see this reality reflected in the Liturgical Calendar: today is our last celebration of the Christ Child, and so our last glance back at the Christmas Season; in just a few weeks it will be Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  We can’t separate the Incarnation from the Via Dolorosa and Calvary.  And it’s no different for any one of us: God doesn’t make his Grace available to spare us our forty years in the desert, or release us from our own Way of the Cross.  Rather, it is to help us through them, because there’s no other way to get the Promised Land beyond.