The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Ver. 23. — As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord (Exod. xiii. 12) —that is, shall be offered and consecrated to God as a thing dedicated and holy. Christ was not bound by this law, both because He subsisted in the Person of the Word, which is bound by no laws, and also because He did not open His mother's womb, but came forth while it remained closed. So Cyril ( Hom. De Occurs . Dom.), Pope Hormisdas (Ep. i. ch. iii.), Bede, and others.
Rupertus, John of Avila, Jansenius, and Maldonatus, therefore, who take the phrase “that openeth the womb” as merely equivalent to “first born,” and suppose, on this ground, that Christ was included in its words, but otherwise excepted from the law as being God and the Son of God, are incorrect in their view. Lastly, I quote the following from S. Bernard’s “Sermon on the Purification” —“Very slight, brethren, does this oblation seem, in which He is but presented to the Lord, redeemed with birds, and straightway taken back. The time shall come when He shall be offered up not in the temple, nor within the arms of Simeon, but outside the city in the arms of the Cross. The time shall come when He shall not be redeemed with blood not his own, but with His own blood shall redeem others, because God the Father hath sent him to be the redemption of His people. That shall be an evening sacrifice, this is a morning sacrifice — this is the more joyous, that shall be the fuller.”
Ver. 24. — And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtle-doves , or two young pigeons , because they were poor ; for the rich were obliged to give in addition to this a lamb for a holocaust. Although the three kings had offered to Christ a great quantity of gold, still the Blessed Virgin, zealously affected towards poverty, accepted but little of it, that she might show her contempt of all earthly things, and what she took she spent in a short time, says John of Avila, on S. Matt. ii. Quest. 47 ; or, if she took much, say S. Bonaventure and Dionysius, she distributed it among the poor. And, lastly, because she was by her condition poor, she would be reckoned among the poor, and offer the gift of the poor.
The purification of the Blessed Virgin is commemorated by the Church on the second day of February, in order, Baronius says, to abolish the Lupercalia, which used to be celebrated at Rome on that day. The order of the rite of purification was as follows : —First, the woman came into the “ court of the unclean ” — she being unclean until her purification. Next, she offered a sin-offering of a turtle-dove or a young pigeon. It is probable that she was also sprinkled with water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer, this water being, as it were, an “ aqua lustralis ” used in all purifications.
Then she offered the infant to God, and redeemed him. And, lastly, she offered to God as a whole burnt-offering of thanksgiving a lamb, or else a turtle-dove, or a pair of young pigeons. These last two acts were performed by the woman (by this time purified) standing in the “ court of the clean ;” there she would offer the infant at the door of the tabernacle ; and there watch from afar off her holocaust being offered in the “court of the priests” — for between the court of the priests and that of the people there was a wall or a partition three feet high, so that the people could, from their court, watch the offerings, and all that was being done in the court of the priests.
Tropologically, the turtle-doves and the pigeons which the woman used to offer for her sin, i.e., her defilement or legal uncleanness, signified the groaning or compunction of the penitent by which sins are expiated, especially when they accompany the sacrament of expiation. Moreover, the Blessed Virgin, having no sin, needed no sacrament to expiate it, but she received the Sacrament of Baptism as a profession of the Christian religion, that of Confirmation , the Eucharist, and perhaps also Extreme Unction. She entered into the state of matrimony with Joseph, but this was not a sacrament in the old law. She never confessed her sins or received absolution from a priest, in that she had no sins. It may be said, however, that the Blessed Virgin had reason to fear lest she had been guilty of some distraction in prayer, some venial negligence in word or thought, and that she might have confessed such as these, since, as S. Gregory says, “ It is the characteristic of good souls to acknowledge fault where there is no fault.” And this is true in the case of sinners and those in the state of original sin, but not for those who are innocent and unspotted as the Blessed Virgin was. Wherefore, as the angels see clearly all their own actions, and the defects — even the most trifling — in them, and as Adam, too, saw his own actions when he was in the state of innocence — in accordance with the perfection which belongs to this state — so the Blessed Virgin in like manner saw all her own acts in the past and in the future, and knew that they were most pure and most holy, and altogether without any defect, even venial, and for this reason she could not confess them as sins. She did not, however, lift herself up on that account, but humbled herself the more, knowing this to be the gift of God and not her own merit. Hence the opinion of Sylvester, in the “Golden Rose” (tit. 3, ch. 53), to the effect that the Blessed Virgin received the Sacrament of Penance and was accustomed to confess venial sins conditionally to S. John, must be flatly rejected, especially as absolution cannot be given on uncertain matter, but the penitent, to be capable of it, must confess some particular sin — Vasquez (part
Ver. 25. — And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel : and the Holy Ghost was upon him . Calvin would have it that Simeon was of obscure birth and unknown ; but that he was venerable by his age and his sanctity appears from what follows here. Many hold that he was a priest, and that it was in this capacity that he blessed Mary and Joseph. So say Lyranus, Dionysius, Cajetan, Francis Lucas, Toletus, S. Athanasius (in “The Common Essence of the Father and the Son”), S. Cyril ( De Occursu Dom.), S. Epiphanius (“ Treatise on the Fathers of the Old Testament”), and Canisius (de Deipara , bk. iv. ch. 10). But Theophylact, Euthymius, Jansenius, and Barradius are of opinion that he was a layman, and gave his blessing not as a priest but as an old man.
And the same was just. From this Galatinus (De Arcanis Fidei, lib. 1, cap. 3) gathers that Simeon was the disciple and son of Hillel, who, a little before the birth of Christ, was the founder of the Scribes and Pharisees, as S. Jerome states on Isa. viii. The words of Galatinus are : “ Simeon, the son of Hillel, whom the Talmudists, by reason of his extraordinary sanctity, call ‘Saddic’ the Just. In whom (as it is related in the ‘Pirke Avoth’ or ‘the chapters of the fathers’) the rule of the great Academy of the Synagogue came to an end. He spoke many things concerning the Messiah, and, at length, being in his extreme old age, and having received an answer from the Holy Ghost that he should not see death without seeing the Messiah, receiving Christ Himself in his arms, he confirmed, in the presence of Christ, the truth of those things which he had taught about Him under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And his noteworthy sayings are to be found scattered about in the books of the Talmudists.”
(Chronology, bk. ii.) is of the same opinion, and adds : “ For the belief that with Simeon the spirit of the great Synagogue — a spirit less than the prophetic but greater than the common— died out, the Talmudists are our authority in the treatise ‘Pirke Avoth.’ The Rabbi Moses, the Egyptian, records that he was not only the disciple, but also the son of Hillel, and the teacher, and indeed the father, of Gamaliel, at whose feet Paul learnt the law.” All this, however, while it appears highly probable, is at the same time uncertain. There were many Simeons or Simons (for the two names are identical) who were just, as, for instance, Simeon the high priest, the son of Oniah, called “the Just,” and spoken of with praise at some length in Ecclus. l. 1. Besides, the successors and disciples of Hillel, the Scribes and Pharisees, were in the highest degree hostile to Christ.