The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Ver. 31. — Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people. That all the nations of the Gentiles may draw salvation from Christ the Saviour. God has not hidden Christ in a corner of Judaea, but has set Him forth before all men, and soon will announce Him throughout the world by His Apostles, that all who will embrace His faith and law may be saved by Him.
Ver. 32. — A light to lighten the Gentiles , and the glory of Thy people Israel. Thou hast given Christ the Saviour that He may be a light for the enlightenment of the Gentiles, enlightening with His faith and worship the Gentiles who know not the true God, and also to be the glory and honour of the Jewish people. The Arabic has, “the light that hath appeared to the nations.” In the same way we have in Ps. cxviii. 18, “ Open Thou ” (that is, illumine) “ mine eyes.” The allusion here is to the prophecy of Isaiah, made seven hundred years before, in ch. xlii. 6, “ I will give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house ; ” and in xlix. 6, “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.” In the Mass, and particularly on the Feast of the Purification , we bless candles, light them, and carry them about, thereby (1) symbolising our belief in Christ as the light of the nations ; and (2) praying that He will grant us in this life the light of His grace, and in the other life the light of His gladness and His glory. And it is for this reason that these lighted candles are put into the hands of the dying. See Amalarius, Durandus, and others, who have written on the Offices of the Church.
And the glory of Thy people Israel. 1. Because Christ, promised to their forefathers by God, took upon Himself the flesh of their race, and was a Jew.
2. Because He lived and died in Judaea, His life being made glorious by His teaching, His holiness, and His miracles.
3. Because He first founded His Church in Judaea, the first believers having been Jews, who afterwards gathered the Gentiles to themselves.
4. It was in Judaea that He rose from the dead and gloriously ascended into heaven, sending down thence the Holy Ghost with the gift of tongues.
The allusion is to Isaiah xlvi. 13, “I will place salvation in Zion for Israel, my glory;” and lx. 1, “The glory of the Lord is risen upon thee ; ” and ibid. 2, “ His glory shall be seen upon thee.”
Ver. 33. — And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him . Joseph, who is called the father of Christ, not only because he was His foster-father, and was commonly supposed to be His natural father, but also because Christ had been born to him lawfully in wedlock, and of his wife Mary ; and this marriage of Joseph with the Blessed Virgin was made and ordained by God for the sake of this progeny. So say S. Augustine ( De Cons. Evang. c. i.), Bede, Jansenius, and others.
Marvelled. For, though they knew that Christ was to be the Saviour of Israel, yet they did not know all that the Holy Ghost was here prophesying about Him by Simeon and Anna — that He was to be a light enlightening all nations, that He should be “ for the ruin and for the resurrection of many in Israel,” that a sword should pierce the soul of the Virgin, &c. Besides, even had they known these things, they would have wondered at their being proclaimed aloud with such enthusiasm and ardour.
Ver. 34. — And Simeon blessed them , and said unto Mary His mother , Behold , this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel ; and for a sign which shall be spoken against. The form for the sacerdotal blessing is prescribed in Num. vi. 24, “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee,” &c.
Blessed them. That is, Joseph and Mary, not the Child Christ, say Maldonatus, Francis Lucas, and others ; for the Child, as his Saviour and his God, he venerated and adored, desiring to be blessed by Him, and not presuming to bless Him. Jansenius, however, thinks that the word “ them ” includes Christ.
And said unto Mary His mother , rather than to Joseph, both because she was the true and natural mother of Jesus, while Joseph was only nominally His father, and also because Joseph seems to have died before the thirtieth year of Christ, when the things here foreshadowed were accomplished, so that the Blessed Mary alone experienced them in herself. To her alone, then, did Simeon here foretell both the happiness and the adversity which are to befall Christ and her, that in happiness she might not be lifted up too much, nor be cast down in her adversity.
Set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel. For fall the Greek has πτῶσιν, and so the Arabic. The allusion is to Isa. viii. 14, “And he shall be for a sanctuary ; but for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel,” (that is), “for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;” and in xxviii. 16, “ Behold, I lay in Sion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation ;” the latter text is quoted against the unbelieving Jews by S. Paul, Rom. ix. 33, by S. Peter, 1 Pet. ii. 6, and Acts iv. 11, and by Christ Himself, Matt. xxi. 42. Christ was laid and placed in the new, that is the Christian Church as a foundation and a corner-stone, that upon Him He might build all those that believed in Him, and of them build up the spiritual edifice of the Church, as He had promised to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and the other patriarchs and prophets. God did this directly with the intention of drawing all the Israelites to the faith of Christ, that He might so bring them into His Church and save them ; but He foresaw that a great part of them would, by reason of their wickedness, speak against Christ when He came, and would strike against Him as on a stone of offence, and that so they would be broken, and fall into ruin both temporal and eternal. Yet He would not change His resolve of sending Christ, but would permit this rebellion and speaking against Him on the part of the Jews in order that it might be the occasion for S. Paul and the Apostles to transfer the preaching of the Gospel from them who resisted it to the Gentiles; and that so, instead of a few Jews, numberless nations might believe in Christ, be built in to Him in the Church, and be saved, as S. Paul shows at length in Rom. xi. Such was the design of God by which He set Christ as the corner-stone of the Church, to be indirectly “for the fall,” but directly “for the rising again of many in Israel .” By fall is meant the destruction of the Jews who rebelled against Christ ; by rising again, the salvation of those who believe in Him : for they that rebelled against Christ fell from faith into faithlessness, from the hope of salvation into despair and reprobation, from heaven into hell ; but they who believe in Him have risen by his grace from the sins in which they lay prostrate to a new life of virtue and grace, looking for the hope of glory. Such is the interpretation of S. Augustine, Bede, Theophylact, Euthymius, Toletus, and many others; indeed, so Christ Himself, S. Peter, and S. Paul interpret in the places quoted above. S. Gregory of Nyssa also interprets “ ruin ” as the devastation of Judaea and Jerusalem by Titus ; for this calamity came upon them because they set at nought and crucified Christ.
Symbolically, Theophylact says that Christ was set “ for the ruin and the resurrection of Israel,” that is, of the penitent soul that sanctifies itself by the grace of Christ, because this grace brings it to pass that pride, gluttony, and lust fall in the soul, while humility, abstinence, and chastity rise up in it.
And for a sign which shall be spoken against. In Greek ἀντιλεγόμενον, a sign of contradiction or of contention, as the Syriac and Arabic render it. Tertullian (de Carne Christi, c. xxiii.) renders it “for a contradictory sign.”
The question arises, What is this sign ?
1. Maldonatus and Francis Lucas say that Christ was set as an archer’s target at which the unbelieving Jews and Scribes hurled not only evil words with the tongue, but also maleficent weapons with the hand. This target was one of contradiction, because the Scribes strove together and contradicted one another about striking and piercing it. So that Simeon alludes to Lam. iii. 12, “ He hath set me as a mark for the arrow, he hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.”
2. S. Basil, Bede, and Theophylact understand the sign of the cross, making it refer to Isa. xi. 10, “In that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign for the people.” The Hebrew word translated “ sign ” is נס, nes, a standard, rendered by the Septuagint σημεῖον, which is the word here used by Luke. Christ, when lifted up on the Cross, is to be a standard-bearer, and shall raise the banner of the Cross, to which He will draw all the faithful as His soldiers to fight against Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, and other impious soldiers of the devil, who contradict the Cross of Christ and fight hard against it. So Toletus interprets.