We tend to treat the Nunc Dimittis – Simeon’s song with the
infant Jesus in his arms – like a mug of Ovaltine, as a
nightcap guaranteeing a good night’s sleep. \it’s what is
sung at Evensong when the day’s work’s done and at Compline
when it’s time for bed. The familiar4 cadences are like
gentle lullabies, easing us onto dreamless slumber.
‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’ Simeon
is satisfied that all he has longed for is now fulfilled in
the child in his arms. He’s an old man. His life is now as
light as a feather on the back of his hand and a puff of
wind will blow it away (‘A Song for Simeon’, T.S.Eliot). Now
he can contentedly take his leave, in the sure knowledge
that his saviour has come.
As we sing his words we catch his mood and our own worries
begin to drain away. All’s well. We can curl up and go to
sleep.
Simeon, we read, was looking to ‘the consolation of Israel.’
This term was used to describe the Messianic age. It takes
up the cry by which an unnamed prophet announced his message
of hope to the exiles in Babylon. ‘Comfort, comfort, my
people’ (Isaiah 40:1). Simeon had craved that promised
comfort. Now salvation is in sight, not only for his own
people but for the Gentiles too. Now at last he can go to
God with a serene heart.
But if our impression of Simeon himself is of a contented
figure with an unequivocally comforting message, then we’ve
mistaken our man. We’ve sung his song too often and with too
little regard to its setting. ‘The Song of Simeon’ ceases to
sound like soothing mood music if we return it to its
context and take account of what he actually says about the
child he’s holding. His words to Mary paint a darker
picture.
People believed that the promised ‘consolation’ would follow
the path mapped out by the prophet. Theirs would be the
destiny he had foretold. They too would rise to triumph from
bitter servitude. For them too the wilderness would rejoice
and the desert blossom. They too would exult over their
oppressors, who would watch this mighty act of God in abject
awe.
Simeon foresaw an altogether different fate for Israel: not
a sunlit highway but the valley of the shadow of death. The
end may be glorious, but the path will be a via dolorosa.
The doom of Israel is presaged in this baby, born to be a
crucified King. Simeon speaks of light and glory, but also
of the ‘falling’ as well as the ‘rising’ of many in Israel.
It will be, as Eliot has it, ‘the time of cords and scourges
and lamentations’. Simeon’s words anticipate what this child
himself will one day say: ‘The Son of Man came to give his
life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).
For Mary herself, there’s little comfort in Simeon’s words.
The sword, thrust into her son’s side, will pierce her heart
also. Simeon turns out to be a much less reassuring figure
than we have made him out to be, and the ‘Presentation in
the Temple’ and altogether more disturbing event than we had
supposed.
A truer account of Simeon’s meeting with the child and his
mother is given by the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini
(c1459-1515). He wrestled with the significance of the story
of Jesus as few artists have done, other than Rembrandt
himself. His study of the Presentation, now in Venice’s
Querini Stampalia Gallery is a great masterpiece. Looking at
it, we see this scene as for the first time.
An unsmiling Simeon reaches out to take the infant Christ.
We are unused to seeing babies swaddled and to us the bands,
which hold him so tightly, seem like cerements. He appears
to be already prepared for burial – which in a way he was.
Mary seems abstracted, as if continuing to ‘ponder in her
heart’ what had been told her concerning her child. Two
women standing by are lost in their own thoughts. One of
them is turning away. Is she unaware of what unfolds beside
her? Or is the burden of it too much. Joseph – it must be
Joseph – stares intently, almost angrily, at us from out of
the picture. He seems to say, ‘Do not for one moment suppose
that you understand what is happening here.’
Simeon sought consolation. But there is pain beyond
consoling, as Mary found. Others, such as C.S.Lewis, have
found that to be so. In his famous ‘A Grief Observed’
published in 1961, he wrote: ‘Talk to me about the truth of
religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty
of religion and I’ll listen, submissively. But don’t come
talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall
suspect that you don’t understand.’