ILLUMINATIONS
And He Shall Purify
The devoutly Christian and once-popular novelist Taylor Caldwell, in A Pillar of Iron, her historical novel on the life of Cicero, imagined that the great orator's Semitic friend, the famous actor Roscius, left Rome and his riches to return to Palestine, to live an ascetic life and to wait for the long-expected Messiah. He took the name of Simeon, she says. That name echoes the Hebrew word for hearing.
Saint Luke tells us that the old man Simeon was "waiting for the consolation of Israel," and was filled with the Holy Spirit. He prayed that God would not dismiss him from the world until he should see with his own eyes the salvation prepared for all the peoples, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel. Did he expect that it would be a grown man, coming to the Temple to worship? Someone who would engage him in conversation? A teacher whose words he could treasure?
But the event is far more mysterious. Mary and -Joseph bring the infant Jesus, the still speechless Word, into the Temple on the fortieth day after his birth, according to the law of Moses. The scene inspired the archbishop Rabanus Maurus to compose his hymn Quod chorus vatum, in powerful Sapphic verses, thus translated for The English Hymnal (1933):
All prophets hail thee, from of old announcing,
By the inbreathed Spirit of the Father,
God's Mother, bringing prophecies to fullness,
Mary the maiden.Thou the true Virgin Mother of the Highest,
Bearing incarnate God in awed obedience,
Meekly acceptest for a sinless offering
Purification.In the high temple Simeon receives thee,
Takes to his bent arms with a holy rapture
That promised Savior, vision of redemption,
Christ long awaited.Now the fair realm of Paradise attaining,
And to thy Son's throne, Mother of the Eternal,
Raised all glorious, yet in earth's devotion
Join with us always.Glory and worship to the Lord of all things,
Pay we unresting, who alone adored,
Father and Son and Spirit, in the highest
Reignest eternal.
Every word of the Lord is gold, but every event in the life of the Lord speaks to us and is golden also. And here Rabanus has caught the wonder of the event that was once known as the Purification. There is no -shedding of blood in Eden. Bloodshed is the most obvious consequence of the Fall. So "if a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child" (Lev. 12:2), she in blood has brought into the world a man tainted with blood, who must be circumcised and in his generative members dedicated to the Lord. And after forty days, she must make an offering of atonement for herself and, presumably, for that sinner-to-be, and then she shall be clean.
But note the mystery here. Christ, who will take upon himself the sins of the world, Christ the Paschal Lamb, is spotless, as his mother Mary is yet a virgin. He who did not need to be circumcised, since he was himself the Lord, sheds his first blood for mankind in that initiatory rite. And he who did not make his mother unclean now enters the Temple on our behalf, as if he were as we are, unclean; and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the aged Simeon sees it, and cries out that he is now ready to die.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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