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On the last Sunday of the Christmas Season we had a story about the adult Jesus being baptized. Today, three weeks after the Christmas Season, we are back to the baby Jesus. Go figure.

Today’s feast, traditionally called the Feast of the Presentation was also called the Feast of the Encounter. Simeon and Anna, in their old age, have a powerful encounter with Jesus, a baby who is anything but powerful. Yet, isn’t that what everyone of us wants, not an intellectual understanding of our faith but an encounter with the living God, an encounter with the Risen Lord? We don’t want to just know some facts about God, we want an experience of the Divine.

It seems that this old man, Simeon, was able to accomplish the last thing on his bucket list before he died. I say, “Good for him and good for anyone who is able to accomplish what they always wanted to do before they died.” Simeon, when holding the child Jesus in his arms, was so overwhelmed with joy that the only thing that could come out of his mouth was, “Now, I can die in peace. My life is complete. By looking into the eyes of this special baby, I know—beyond a shadow of a doubt—I am looking into the eyes of my salvation.”

Then comes a little bit of gospel humour. A woman named Anna is also part of this story, for she too was in the Temple when Mary and Joseph presented the child. We are told the woman’s age; Anna is 84. But, we are not told the man’s age. And here I thought it was women who didn’t like revealing their age.  

Both Simeon and Anna are wisdom figures. What we need desperately in our society now, and always have needed, is not just old people but, more importantly, elders. Anyone can grow old—we’re aging as I speak–but not everyone matures into an elder. These two characters, Simeon and Anna, are truly elders.

While Simeon is over the moon that his bucket list is now complete—he has seen  the Messiah—he’s also very practical. He tells Mary that a sword will pierce her heart. He’s warning her to get ready for some profound sorrow in her life. This baby Jesus will be the answer to peoples’ deepest hopes and desires and, at the same time, will be hated and opposed. He will walk both of those paths, the hero and the rejected one, but he will not seek to please either of them. He’s not looking to be a hero, nor is he looking to be a martyr. He’s looking only to do one thing—to be faithful to God. His only goal is to be the embodiment of God’s love in the world. That’s it. Sometimes we will accept that love and other times we will reject it. We are no different than those people in the Bible.  

Now, this Simeon has seen many, many babies come into the Temple during his long life. Somehow, he knows this one is different. He knew that while this baby had a special mission, it would not be an easy mission neither for Jesus nor for his parents, especially Mary.

Apparently, the life expectancy in Biblical times was about 40. Anna is 84, and Simeon is probably around that age also. They’ve lived, you might say, double the life expectancy. They are what the Bible refers to as the “faithful remnant.” The faithful remnant are the small, minority of people who never gave up waiting for the Messiah to come. The prophets spoke for hundreds of years about the coming of the Messiah, and because it dragged on for all that time, the majority of people simple gave up on the idea. Simeon and Anna never did give up. Each day was a new beginning. They kept the hope alive not for 40 years but for twice that amount. Every day they lived in the present moment without giving up. That’s amazing.

The key to our happiness has something to do with living in the present moment. Living in the past can keep us in the so-called “good old days” where everything was better in the past, and if we can just roll back the clock, the whole world will automatically be better. Now, the flip side of living in the past for others, is that they keep replaying a recording of some past sin that they can’t seem to forgive themselves for. Something didn’t work out, and it frustrates us that we can’t go back and change it. Now, the problem with living in the future is that we also can’t control it any more than we can control the past. Living too much in the future brings with it anxiety. It’s called pre-occupation. We occupy a place before we actually get there. Your body is here but your mind is pre-occupied with the test result you’re waiting for from the doctor next week.

Simeon and Anna remind me of the spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle. Maybe you read his international best seller called The Power of Now. You thought I was repetitive in my homilies. This guy has a thousand ways, in this one book, of speaking about how the real power and energy of life is always to be found in the now, the present moment. Here’s just one quote from that book. He writes: “Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life. What is the difference? Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real. Find the narrow gate that leads to life. It is call the Now” (p. 62).  

I find that so hard to do. The only two things that can bring me back to the all-important “now” is meditation, when I’m disciplined enough to sit still, and when I’m looking into the eyes of a baby. By the way, babies are the only people that will allow you to look into their eyes endlessly and take joy in it. They never say, “you’re crowding my space.”

Maybe that’s what Simeon and Anna knew. By looking into the eyes of this baby, they were looking into the eternal “now,” the only thing that exists. The past is the past. Learn from it, grow from it, but don’t be a slave to it. And the future is yet to be revealed. It’s a preoccupation that robs us of being present to people and beauty.  

Look for elders, like Simeon and Anna. They will be our guides if we let them. And surprise, surprise the elder may actually come to us in the form of a baby.

~Fr. Phil