Verbum Diei
2025-12-29Vatican NewsLatestArchive
Day

Observances

Season Christmas
Cycle Year A
Psalter Week I
Reading

A reading from the First Letter of John

1 John 2:3-11
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition — Public Domain

3And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. We have known him, if we keep his commandments... He speaks of that practical knowledge by love and affection, which can only be proved by our keeping his commandments; and without which we can not be said to know God as we should do.

4He who saith that he knoweth him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar: and the truth is not in him.

5But he that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected. And by this we know that we are in him.

6He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked.

7Dearly beloved, I write not a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard.

8Again a new commandment I write unto you: which thing is true both in him and in you, because the darkness is passed and the true light now shineth. A new commandment... Viz., the commandment of love, which was first given in the old law; but was renewed and extended by Christ. See John 13.34.

9He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother is in darkness even until now.

10He that loveth his brother abideth in the light: and there is no scandal in him.

11But he that hateth his brother is in darkness and walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth: because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.

Gospel

From the Gospel according to Luke

Luke 2:22-35
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition — Public Domain

22And after the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord:

23As it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord:

24And to offer a sacrifice, according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons:

25And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon: and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Ghost was in him.

26And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.

27And he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when his parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the law,

28He also took him into his arms and blessed God and said

29Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace:

30Because my eyes have seen thy salvation,

31Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:

32A light to the revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.

33And his father and mother were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning him.

34And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be contradicted. For the fall, etc... Christ came for the salvation of all men; but here Simeon prophesies what would come to pass, that many through their own wilful blindness and obstinacy would not believe in Christ, nor receive his doctrine, which therefore would be ruin to them: but to others a resurrection, by their believing in him, and obeying his commandments.

35And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.

Gloss

Commentary

On the Reading
  • R 3,6The passage frames knowledge of God as a juridical claim tested by conduct. It replaces mystical interiority with an externally verifiable criterion and makes imitation of Jesus the concrete definition of 'abiding'.
  • R 10'No scandal' is not sinlessness but non-obstruction: love stabilizes the community’s path so that others are not tripped into apostasy.
On the Gospel
  • G 23,31,33Luke stages a convergence of scriptural citation, universal horizon ('all peoples'), and domestic astonishment: the event is larger than the family that carries it, and the Law’s text becomes the stage on which its fulfillment is recognized.
  • G 26,34Prophecy functions as verification and as forecast of conflict: the Messiah is identified not by triumph but by the coming division he produces, making rejection itself part of the narrative logic of revelation.

DoctrinalUnion with God is measured by obedient love, not by claims of insight. Christ’s advent discloses hearts by forcing a division: light for the nations and contradiction for the resistant.

Heterodox Reading
These texts don’t soothe; they interrogate. “By this we know” is not comfort but surveillance. Knowledge becomes a moral lie detector: keep the commandments or you are counterfeit. Love is not a feeling here; it’s the price of belonging, and the penalty for refusal is darkness so thick you can’t even tell where you’re going. Simeon’s “light” arrives like a blade. The child is carried in as an offering, and the old man reads him as an instrument that will sort the crowd by breaking it: fall for some, rising for others. The revelation is not gentle illumination; it is exposure. Hearts are opened by contradiction, and Mary is told that intimacy with this light will wound her. Salvation comes with dread built in: to be seen is to be judged, and to love is to submit to a command that keeps cutting until nothing hidden remains.
Semina Verbi
John’s voice is hard-edged: “knowing” is not an idea but a tested intimacy. Psychology first, theology second. If your life does not bend toward the beloved—toward concrete restraint, repair, fidelity—then the claim to insight is self-deception dressed as certainty. The text treats hatred not as a single act but as a weather system: it darkens perception, warps navigation, makes the world unreadable. Love, by contrast, is clarity; it is the condition in which you stop tripping over other people. Luke sets that ethic inside a human arc of waiting. Simeon is the mind that has carried a promise for so long it has become his breathing; when the child arrives, the body relaxes into release. The “light” here is not mere cheer; it is exposure. A life that reveals will also provoke. Simeon names the fracture line: some will rise because they can bear being seen; some will fall because they cannot. And Mary is told that to love what is vulnerable is to accept a blade: the cost of attachment is pain, and pain becomes the instrument by which hidden motives surface. Semina Verbi, briefly and speculative: this reads like the Bhagavad Gita’s insistence that real knowledge shows up as disciplined action, and like Stoic practice where virtue is proven in conduct, not speech. Simeon’s long patience echoes the Buddhist image of ripening karma and the quiet readiness of the bodhisattva, while the “sword” resembles the Sufi and Zen motif that awakening cuts through the heart’s attachments. In each, light is both comfort and confrontation.