Waiting in Patience: Meeting the Lord in the Temple

How long can you wait patiently for something? A month? A year? A decade? Your entire life?

I don't think I'm particularly patient. I recently grumbled because I spent five-and-a-half slightly uncomfortable hours on an airplane, and in that time traversed the entire continent. Fewer than 200 years ago, that trip would have taken about 140 days in a wagon!

We live in an age of miracle and wonder, but to say we also live in an age of instant gratification may undersell just how infrequently we are required to simply…wait. When nearly everything is on-demand, the very idea of patiently waiting decades for a promise to be fulfilled seems almost incomprehensible.

Waiting as Active Preparation

On February 2nd, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, an event which speaks directly to the patience the Lord asks us to cultivate. On this day, the patient faith of the Old Covenant meets the unmistakable, dawning light of the New. This feast, one of the Twelve Great Feasts of our Church year, commemorates the day when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, forty days after His birth, in accordance with the Law of Moses.

The act itself isn't particularly remarkable: a devout couple brings their firstborn son to the Temple, following the ancient customs of consecration and purification. But what happens next ripples through salvation history.

Mary and Joseph are met by the elderly and righteous Simeon, a man who had received a divine promise that he would not die before beholding the promised and foretold Messiah. Guided by the Holy Spirit to the Temple that day, Simeon—after what tradition suggests were decades of faithful waiting—immediately recognizes in this one infant the extraordinary fulfillment of God's promise.

Now, finally, his faithfulness having come to its fruition, Simeon takes the Christ child in his arms and utters what we now know as the Song of Simeon, one of the most beautiful and moving prayers in Christian tradition:

Alongside Simeon stood Anna the Prophetess, an elderly widow who had spent decades in fasting and prayer within the Temple grounds. She too recognized the child as the Messiah, gave thanks to God, and "spoke of Him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem" (Luke 2:38).

These two elderly servants of God, the steadfast faithful of the Old Covenant, had maintained their vigil of hope through long years of waiting. Like the wise maidens who kept their lamps burning through the dark night, Simeon and Anna's watchful perseverance was more than simple waiting, it was active preparation for the moment they would meet the Lord.

The Transformative Power of Christ

The Feast of the Presentation reveals a fundamental truth of our faith: nothing that encounters Christ remains unchanged. The Greek word for this feast, Ὑπαπαντή (Hypapante, or Meeting), captures this. The Old Covenant is meeting the New Covenant. Just as Christ's birth transformed a humble cave into a nave, and His baptism made the waters of the earth holy, His entrance into the Temple transfigures the Law of the Old Covenant into the Love of the new.

At Theophany, Christ told John the Forerunner about His own baptism, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). Jesus entered the Jordan not needing ritual purification, but to sanctify the waters themselves. Forty days after His birth, we see this pattern again. Mary and Joseph bring their firstborn son to the Temple to fulfill the Law, but as with Theophany, there is a divine irony: what Temple practice could possibly present the eternal Son to His Father? What ritual could possibly purify the Spotless One? And so the Logos who gave the Law now submits to it, not from necessity, but to fulfill all righteousness.

Through His presence, He transforms not only Simeon and Anna but the entire system of worship. The two sacrificial turtledoves Mary and Joseph offer under the Law of the Old Covenant give way to the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist because of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice and triumph.

As David wrote, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17).

This transformation of sacrifice—from doves to the Eucharistic gifts, from burnt offerings to bruised hearts—shows the impact of Christ’s living presence in the temple on His day of Presentation. The Old Covenant promise that began with the presence of God in the Holy of Holies, long considered in Jewish tradition to be a place where heaven and earth touch, is fulfilled by the infant God incarnate.

A Patient Heart God Will Not Spurn

The patient faithfulness of Sts. Simeon and Anna suggest that their watchfulness was participation in the mystery of salvation itself. Their patience was rewarded not just with a glimpse of the infant Christ, but with a revelation of how completely God fulfills His promises!

God gives me lots of opportunities to practice patience. I wonder what better use of them I might make, if I saw all of them as active preparation for the moment I might meet the Lord? Thinking about the stories of this Feast, I wonder if I could have waited like Simeon or Anna. Five hours on a plane makes me restless; what about five decades or more in the temple? What would happen if I could wait like them? If I could see those moments calling for patience as times for gracious preparation and for making room for the Lord?

Five hours or five decades—maybe the real question isn't how long we can wait, but how we wait. Can we, like Simeon and Anna, learn to see the Light when it appears? Can we train our eyes to see past the ordinary to glimpse the extraordinary ways God fulfills His promises? Perhaps that's what patience means: keeping watch, staying ready, and trusting that the One who transformed their waiting will transform ours as well.