Advent Reflections on the Office Canticles (Part 3)
The last canticle we sing each day is the Song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis. To hear it we have to return again to the Temple as we did with Zechariah. Simeon was well-advanced in age, and had been told that he would not die before he had seen the redemption of Israel. And so he served and waited for decades. The song he sings is the fruit of many years of patience and with the clarity that twilight provides. It is the prayer of a person whose road and days are all behind him. But for all of his years, his focus is not on what has passed but what still remains.
His life and service were defined by his anticipation of a thing that remained to happen in an ever shrinking future. We could look at this through the world’s eyes, through the despondency we are too often tempted to attach to waiting. But in truth, Simeon’s life was one in which the open horizon of endless potential–ever the siren song to the young–was through years of faithful waiting focused with an unimaginable intensity on one focal point: the Savior. By the time that Simeon encountered Christ in the arms of His mother, no other ambition remained with Him but to see the vision of Israel’s Messiah.
Simeon’s song is the shortest of the canticles, which conveys this intensity. Where Zechariah elaborated on the epochs of Israel’s covenant history, Simeon captures all of his long life in that sacred space in the words “you now let your servant depart in peace, as you promised you would, having seen your salvation.” Simeon characterizes that salvation as a light that will shine from Israel, which it will magnify, upon all people who will be illuminated by it. In this way, he sings with the voice of Zechariah, who sang of the Dayspring that would visit and give the light of God.
He sings with the voice of Mary who declared that this merciful light would shine on all generations. In seeing the infant Christ, He can see the whole future of his people and humanity.
And as Mary’s song reflected her own person as a kind of Temple, so Simeon now confirms it through his language of ‘the glory of Israel’ and ‘the light of the Gentiles.’ This is a reflection of the Old Testament prophet Zechariah’s prophecy concerning the redemption of Israel: “And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord … who hold fast to my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain ... for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Sovereign Lord declares— he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered” (Zechariah 9:9-10).
The great Temple of Jerusalem in which the meeting is set becomes an almost negligible backdrop to the encounter. There is a shift of focus from the place to this infant Person in the arms of His mother. It is one illuminated path stretching from the beginning to the end. All has been brought together in that encounter. Simeon is able to welcome the end of his mortal days with the expectation that this light and salvation are all that is now before Him. What he needs to depart in peace has been found. All that was comprehended by covenant faithfulness has been accomplished and has been offered in a hymn of remembrance and thanksgiving and anticipation.
Left to ourselves, we fear the night because it is an image of death. Our day inevitably ends, whether we feel like we are done with our work or not. The night is uncertain, it is less naturally illuminated and requires that we slow down and rest. We struggle mightily with that rest. We have done much as a civilization to eradicate the darkness of the nighttime, but instead of the artificial daylight we have tried to produce we have created an eerie twilight surrounded by darkness. And in it we refuse to rest. To sing the song of Simeon is a grace to rescue us from this restlessness. Before the night fully comes, we are given the chance to say “it is okay to let go, because the One who will perfect everything is here. He will take care of me.”
This Song accompanies the Song of Mary at Evening Prayer, in that we receive that grace again as those who with humility have sought the Lord. We end our day of prayer with this Song because it is an entrusting of our whole future–whether it be but a few days or many–into the hands of a God who we acknowledge to be the God who keeps every promise and ushers us into salvation when we seek it. No nightfall can shake that assurance, and so each day we can lay our lives down in peace knowing that we are safe. To sing with Simeon brings us to the point where all need and desire and experience is met by Christ, who fulfills all that is good. With what is left we are brought through the song to lay it down, to see nothing at the end of our day’s work but Christ, and through Him to see and anticipate the coming redemption.
Everyday, we have the opportunity to practice the grace of Advent in the Daily Offices. The Benedictus causes us to remember, to allow the past to catch up to us and to enter the day with a hopeful sense of expectation that we do not go out alone, but that the Lord is making straight the way before Himself, and that this straight path He walks is the one we walk as we follow in His wake. The Magnificat draws us to the new Temple of God in Jesus Christ, who magnifies His mother and the gift of the humanity she gives as a representative of all of us in the human family. We are called to practice contemplative stillness in that moment between Child and mother in which is figured the making new of all things and through which all creation rejoices. And in the Nunc Dimittis we assent to the grace that has been revealed as a light to us, we let go of our lives. We let go of everything except the vision of Jesus Christ we have received, and expect with hope to receive all things necessary through Him. By singing three songs each day, the ruptured time in which we live is healed, united through Jesus Christ. We are, in this way, knit together with all of God’s people who in a timeless chorus hail the Son of God in the Spirit, to the glory of the Father. As we enter Christmastide, may we receive again the grace to do likewise.