Many people today when they read this story would immediately dismiss these two people, Simeon and Anna, as Holy Joes; but if we have an open mind to the word of God there is a very relevant message for our world today, in these two people.  They discover Christ as the fulfilment of all-human dreams and expectations. Christ has come to accompany us on our pilgrimage through life.  We like Simeon and Anna must undergo the same ordeal that they went through.  Every day the world we inhabit is being transformed into a more secularised world.  We are living in a world that pretends it does not need God, a world that thinks it has all the answers, a world that is the object of its own fallacy. Then we sit back in amazement and wonder and speculate what has gone wrong with the world? Where is it all going? Simeon and Anna recognized the great gift hidden in the bundled infant in Mary’s arms. But far from being sentimental Simeon knew that this baby would bring a challenge, greater than the world had yet known.  He knew the price this child, and those who loved him, would pay to alter the life of the world.  We like Simeon and Anna must experience Christ as the missing piece in the jigsaw of our lives. We need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Some people today shun and avoid a personal relationship with Christ, some fall by the wayside especially y in their religious practice, simply because Christ is challenging, Christ is too demanding. The Christ child challenges us to profess our faith and change our lives.   Karl Rahner encapsulates this idea when he writes: ‘you are still the hidden child in a world grown old. But I, O hidden Lord of all things, boldly affirm my faith in you…If I make this avowal of faith, it must pierce the depths of my heart like a sword, I must bend my knee before you, saying, I must alter my life’.  Am I willing to make this avowal of faith?  Am I willing to profess my faith in Christ no matter what price I must pay?

The beautiful prayer that is recorded here is used by the priests in their breviary, liturgy of the hours, which is also called the universal prayer of the Church. This is how those who read the liturgy of the hours end their night prayers.  Christ invites us to learn to pray this prayer with the Church each night. Ask yourselves, where have I seen glimpses of God in my life today?  Let go of each day and rest in God’s peace.  Leave the world in God’s hands while we sleep, and rise refreshed to do God’s works each day.