Beholding the Promise: Simeon, the Spirit, and the Mystery of Advent [Firebrand Big Read]
From Nunc Dimittis window at St Nicholas Church in Sandhurst, UK. By James Powell & sons, 1875, designed by H. Holiday. (Source: WikiCommons)
And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the Law, then he took Him in his arms, and blessed God, and said, “Now, Lord, You are letting Your bond-servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation, 31 Which You have prepared in the presence of all the peoples: A light for revelation for the Gentiles, And the glory of Your people Israel.” And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him. And Simeon blessed them and said to His mother Mary, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and as a sign to be opposed—and a sword will pierce your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:25-35)
Simeon’s story, as told in Luke’s Gospel, offers a critical lens through which to explore the spirit of Advent—one marked by deep-seated anticipation and fulfillment. Here, we encounter a man whose life is a testament to waiting, cultivating hope, and preparing the heart for divine revelation. Luke’s narrative introduces Simeon as someone “righteous and devout,” a man attuned to the promises of Yahweh, specifically the hope of Israel’s consolation. But what shapes such an attunement? What kind of person is formed through years of expectant longing?
Through the dual lenses of narrative and canonical criticism, we can glimpse a layered portrayal of Simeon. Historically, his life is set against the backdrop of first-century Judea—a time rife with messianic expectation as Israel languished under Roman occupation. Spiritually, Simeon stands as a bridge between the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Incarnation, embodying the long arc of Israel’s story. Luke tells us he had been given a remarkable revelation: that he would not see death until he beheld the Lord’s Christ. Yet we are left to wonder—when did this promise come to him? Was he a young man, brimming with early zeal and hope? Or had the promise come later, igniting fresh anticipation in a heart already shaped by years of longing for the days of Messiah?
Simeon’s name, derived from the Hebrew root shama meaning "to hear" or "to listen," carries critical significance within his story. It evokes a posture of attentiveness and receptivity, a life defined by listening to and waiting for the voice of God. This semiotic connection between his name and his narrative underscores Simeon’s role as one who hears the Spirit’s promise and remains attuned to its fulfillment. In the biblical tradition, names often signify identity and calling, and Simeon embodies the vocation of Israel itself: to hear Yahweh’s voice and bear witness to His purposes. In Simeon, the act of listening extends to a spiritual attentiveness that culminates in seeing—he hears the promise of the Consolation of Israel and, by divine grace, beholds its fulfillment in the Christ child. His story reminds us that Advent is not merely about waiting but about cultivating the discipline of hearing and the readiness to embrace the mystery when it is revealed.
By the time of Christ’s Advent, Simeon is far advanced in years. His waiting has stretched into decades, and such sustained anticipation must have done something compelling to his internal frame of reference. Waiting is not passive; it shapes perception, intuition, imagination, and even the lens through which one discerns reality. Simeon, Luke tells us, came into the temple “in the Spirit.” This phrase could imply a moment of ecstatic inspiration, but it might also suggest a life of cultivated sensitivity—a practiced openness to the Spirit’s guidance and a disciplined orientation toward the “aboutness” of looking for the consolation of Israel.
How many times had Simeon walked into the temple, cognizant and expectant of the Spirit’s promise, scanning the faces of 8-day-old boys brought for circumcision and dedication? How many children had he observed with such focused intentionality, his heart attuned to the hope of the Messiah? Year after year, he entered with the same “aboutness,” the disciplined focus of one who lives in active expectation. Each time, he must have asked himself, “Could this be the One?” yet returned home without fulfillment. And still, Simeon’s hope endured. His decades of faithful waiting—marked by spiritual attentiveness and the honing of perception—prepared him for this one moment when he would recognize the extraordinary veiled in the ordinariness of infancy. It was not chance, but the convergence of divine timing and his practiced readiness that brought him to embrace the God-man, the Messiah himself.
Simeon’s recognition of Mary’s boy as the God-man, veiled in infancy, is nothing short of divine revelation. While his years of anticipation and spiritual discipline cultivated his readiness, this kairos moment transcends human effort. It is the Spirit of God who opens Simeon’s eyes to perceive what others could not. Simeon’s lived experience was one of entering fully into the moment of Advent for himself—a lifetime of waiting and preparation that culminated in this divine revelation. Carl Jung would call this “synchronicity”:
The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties, when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or “runs.” What I found were “coincidences” which were connected so meaningfully that their “chance” concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure” (Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Kindle ed., Princeton UP, vol 8, 21-2).
This observation about meaningful coincidences invites us to consider how such moments transcend ordinary causality, reflecting connections that defy explanation through chance alone. Jung’s reference to the collective unconscious is key here, as he understood it to be the shared reservoir of archetypes and symbols that shape human experience across time and cultures. These archetypes—themes and patterns that recur in myths, dreams, and spiritual traditions—often manifest in ways that align inner realities with external events. Such moments are not random; rather, they point to an intentional alignment where personal readiness resonates with universal meaning, suggesting a deeper, orchestrated purpose—an acausal order that reveals both mystery and significance.
Simeon’s encounter fits this framework of meaningfully connected events, not as a mere coincidence but as a moment where divine purpose and human experience intersect with marked intentionality. This meeting was not just a convergence of circumstances; it was an acausal connection orchestrated by the Spirit. As Jung illustrates with his example of the golden scarab, such synchronicities carry symbolic weight, aligning the inner world with the outer reality in ways that transcend ordinary causality. Jung writes,
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle” (Synchronicity, 21-22).
In much the same way, Simeon’s moment in the temple represents the convergence of an external event—the presence of the Christ child—and an internal readiness cultivated by years of spiritual expectation. Yet it is far more than an archetypal pattern or psychological alignment; it is a divinely orchestrated revelation. The Spirit’s prompting, Simeon’s disciplined waiting, and the Messiah’s arrival are woven together with intentional precision, forming a moment so improbable it transcends human explanation.
Unlike Jung’s exploration of synchronicity as rooted in the collective unconscious, Simeon’s recognition is grounded in the work of the Spirit—an unveiling of the divine mystery. The collective unconscious, as defined by Jung, is “that part of the psyche that is universal and impersonal; all human beings are connected to the collective unconscious. It is inherited, not developed, and is the locus of the archetypes” (D. Andrew Kille, Psychological Biblical Criticism, Fortress, 2001, 138).
While the collective unconscious connects humanity through shared archetypes and universal symbols, Simeon’s ability to see the extraordinary within the ordinary rests not on this psychological framework but on divine grace. His recognition is not the product of inherited archetypal patterns but a direct revelation, the Spirit opening his eyes to perceive the Messiah veiled in human infancy—a reality beyond the reach of human insight or symbolic resonance alone.
Simeon’s kairos moment transcends the psychological alignment Jung identified as synchronicity, becoming instead a Spirit-led intersection of divine promise and human readiness. His recognition of Christ is not a coincidental event but a moment of divine orchestration, where God’s timing converges with Simeon’s cultivated anticipation, illuminating the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Simeon embodies the archetype of the wise elder, a figure whose long journey of spiritual integration prepares him for this ultimate encounter. While Jungian thought identifies the sage or elder as an archetype representing wisdom born from life experience—a culmination of inner transformation and alignment with universal truths—Simeon’s role transcends this psychological framework. His wisdom is not the result of abstract alignment with archetypal patterns but is deeply rooted in the covenantal history and Spirit-led hope of Israel.
Simeon’s role is not an isolated phenomenon but one that constellates around the influence of the sages and prophets of Israel, figures like Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah, whose lives were marked by a visceral expectation of Yahweh’s promises. Their voices, carried forward in the Sacred Text and the Tradition, shaped the identity of Israel, infusing Simeon’s anticipation with the echoes of their prophetic hope. In this sense, Simeon stands as both an individual and a communal figure, embodying the collective longing for the Messiah while also receiving, through the Spirit, the divine revelation of God’s fulfillment in Christ.
In Simeon’s story, we see a consistent scriptural pattern: the interplay between infancy and old age. This recurring motif underscores how God’s promises are fulfilled across generations, bridging the wisdom of the elder with the hope embodied in the child. Again and again, Scripture binds the two together in moments of divine promise and fulfillment. Abraham and Sarah’s old age gave way to Isaac’s birth, signaling the initiation of God’s covenant. Hannah’s advanced years bore Samuel, whose life would reshape Israel’s trajectory. The interplay continues into the New Testament, where Zechariah and Elizabeth, in their old age, receive John the Baptist as the forerunner to the Christ child. Now Simeon, representing the wisdom and completion of old age, takes into his arms the infant Christ—the Alpha and Omega embodied.
This meeting of infancy and old age encapsulates the entire arc of redemptive history, where the promises of the past find their fulfillment in the newness of divine life. Simeon’s years of disciplined expectation cultivated a sensitivity that, through divine revelation, allowed him to behold the God-man veiled in infancy. Like the prophets before him, Simeon becomes a bridge between divine purpose and human history, standing at the threshold of fulfillment. This synchronicity reflects not merely an archetypal resolution but a sacred mystery, where human history and divine reality meet in Christ. It offers a glimpse into the deep interconnection of all things, where the timeless promises of the past converge with the unfolding redemption of the future. Advent invites us into this same mystery, calling us to embrace the tension of waiting and fulfillment, past and future, the Christ who has come and the Christ who is yet to come, and to live in readiness for the God who breaks into time, bringing life and renewal in His wake.
Mark Chironna is the Presiding Bishop of Engage, a network of bishops and pastors, and the founding pastor and Overseer of Church On The Living Edge in Longwood, Florida. He serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.