Meeting Christ
Then and Now
February 2 is a solemn holiday for Christians. The feast is known as the Meeting of the Lord among Eastern Orthodox. The event occasioning this celebration is the Gospel account from St. Luke (2:22-40), where Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to the temple on the fortieth day. The righteous Simeon and Prophetess Anna are there to meet Jesus.
The nun Egeria mentions the celebration of this feast in her written account of liturgy in Jerusalem (ca. 381-384). Egeria says that its solemnity is comparable to Pascha. Almost a century later, a presbyter named Hesychius makes a similar claim in two homilies on the feast. A festal procession took place in Christian cities such as Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, with the faithful bearing candles to meet their Lord. Historians suggest that a wealthy noble woman named Ikelia may have started this tradition (Groen and Brakmann). It is also noteworthy that Egeria’s account refers to this feast as the fortieth day after Epiphany, until the word Hypapante (Meeting) emerged in the fifth century.
This feast is about waiting.
The righteous Simeon waited his entire life to meet the Lord. He is thankful and prophesies - he tells the truth - that Jesus will be the cause of the rise and fall of many, and will also pierce a sword through his mother’s heart.
We wait for much to come to pass, often impatiently.
We wait impatiently to make money.
We wait impatiently to get a coveted job.
We wait impatiently for medicine.
We wait impatiently to fall in love.
Sometimes we feel frustrated, even angry, that we do not get what we have been waiting for.
In this sense, we are unlike the righteous Simeon. Simeon waited for the person who was more important than the stuff we want.
This person turned out to be the one who was the fulfillment of the law.
Think about it. Think about how badly we want to live in a lawful world, how much we yearn for justice.
God has answered our prayer. God has revealed righteousness to us in Jesus Christ. God has given us the source of justice by sending us the sun of justice.
Unlike Simeon, we do not have to wait. We don’t have to wait because God has given us Jesus Christ through the grace and descent of the Spirit in Baptism and in the anointing of Chrismation.
And God gives us Jesus Christ whenever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, in the proclamation of the Gospel, and in the most precious gift of Holy Communion - the body and blood of the Sun of Justice himself.
Our waiting - often impatient waiting - entails a sword piercing through our hearts. We want a God who takes and delivers the things we want as if God were divine Doordash. (Yes, just leave both my dream job and the love of my life on the step, please).
We want a God who will wipe out our enemies because surely, we are right and they are wrong.
God gives us righteousness in his son, who takes the blows of those who envy him and gives them the other cheek to strike him.
God gives us righteousness in his son who gives his life voluntarily, on the cross, and in so doing, reveals the foolishness of the things we want and shows us what our hearts need to live - love.
So on this feast of Meeting - meeting our creator, who condescended to be born in the cave and laid in a manger, and who deigned to be baptized by the hand of the forerunner - may God pierce our hearts with the sword that recreates his divine image in us and teaches us how to love as God loves.