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Day 8 of the Blessed Coptic Month of Amshir, may God make it always received, year after year, with reassurance and tranquility, while our sins after forgiven by the tender mercies of our God my fathers and brothers.
Amen.
The Eighth Day of the Blessed Month of Amshir
Feast of Presenting the Lord Christ to the Temple
On this day we celebrate the feast
of presenting the Lord Christ to the temple after 40 days of His blessed
birth. St. Joseph the righteous and His mother, the Virgin Mary, presented
Him in the temple, to fulfill the Mosaic Law. St. Luke the Evangelist says
that when His parents brought Him according to the custom of the law, the
just and devout Simeon the elder took Him in his arms and blessed God and
said, "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according
to Your Word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared
before the face of all people, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles,
and the Glory of Your people Israel." (Luke 2:29-32) Simeon was one of
the 70 elders who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. This
was in the time of Ptolemy Soter in the year 296 B.C., who was sent by
the will of God to Jerusalem. He brought 70 men from among the learned
Jewish teachers and scholars and commanded them to translate the Old Testament
from Hebrew to Greek. He put every two of them in an isolated place so
they would not agree on one translation, and to ensure a correct text after
comparing all of the translations. Simeon the elder was one of them. When
Simeon was translating the verse from Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the virgin
shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel," he was
afraid to translate that a virgin would conceive, because the King would
mock him. He wanted to translate the virgin as a "young lady." He was disturbed
because of this inaccurate translation, and God revealed to him in a vision
that he would not die before he would see Christ the Lord born of a virgin.
This was fulfilled and he lived about three hundred years. When Christ
was born; he was very well advanced in age and his sight dimmed. When he
carried the child Jesus in his hands, his sight came back to him, and the
Holy Spirit told him, "This is the child that you have been waiting for."
He blessed God and said, "You are letting Your servant depart in peace
according to Your Word, for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You
have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation
to the Gentiles and the Glory of Your people Israel." (Luke 2:28-32)
May The prayers of this righteous man be with us, and Glory be to our God forever. Amen.