This Sunday contains one of the few descriptions of the Holy Family in all scripture. Their appearance here emphasizes how important family care is for children and for all human beings. Mary and Joseph seem hesitant but have exquisite care for the baby Jesus.

Family life and church life are part of the same thing; in both we participate in God’s life. Both Simeon and Anna recognized this child as the Messiah; they spotted him when Joseph and Mary brought him in. But again, it wasn’t like he was glowing or anything. The only reason they recognized baby Jesus as “the one” was because it was revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. Simeon and Anna are standing in for all of Israel in seeing the fulfillment of all of the prophecies and all of Israel’s history coming now before their eyes. We know that Simeon was waiting on the Messiah. This is what is meant when it says that he was waiting on the Consolation of Israel. Simeon was a holy waiter. He lived in a period of spiritual drought, but he believed God and waited for the Consolation.

A holy longing for God helps us remains alert in the face of every attempt to reduce and impoverish our life.  A holy longing for God is the memory of faith that keeps hope alive in the community of believers, which from week to week continues to plead: “Come, Lord Jesus”. This same longing led the elderly Simeon to go up each day to the Temple, certain that his life would not end before he had held the Savior in his arms.  This longing led the Prodigal Son to abandon his self-destructive lifestyle and to seek his father’s mercy.  This was the longing felt by the shepherd who left the ninety-nine sheep in order to seek out the one that was lost.  Mary Magdalen experienced the same longing on that Sunday morning when she ran to the tomb and met her risen Master.  Longing for God draws us out of our iron-clad isolation, which makes us think that nothing can change.  Longing for God shatters our dreary routines and impels us to make the changes we want and need.   Longing for God has its roots in the past yet does not remain there: it reaches out to the future.  Believers who feel this longing are led by faith to seek God, as the Magi did, in the most distant corners of history; for they know that there the Lord awaits them.  They go to the peripheries, to the frontiers, to places not yet evangelized, to encounter their Lord.