NOTES for Luk 2:26
There are people in the world of one thought, one goal, one idea. And if the idea or goal is worthy, God can meet such people. So it was with Simeon. He wanted only one thing: to see the Messiah. With his own eyes. To live to the day when the Messiah would come. And God promised him this.
Of course, if not everyone, then many among the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah then. But they waited in different ways. In some way everyone probably expected Him. The only question is how. Some waited only to a certain extent. In principle they would not have minded seeing Him and meeting Him, but only to a certain extent. In any case, waiting for the Messiah was not the main work of life for such people. If He had come during their lifetime, well, they too would perhaps have been among those who met Him. If their business allowed.
Others waited more impatiently, with hope. These were usually deeply religious and religiously active people. For them the coming of the Messiah meant the culmination of their own religious life, and they certainly did not doubt that on that day they would be in the first ranks of those who met Him. Moreover, they were sure that the Messiah would come first of all precisely for their sake. There were especially many such people among the members of the Pharisaic brotherhood, but of course there were others who had no direct relation to the Pharisees and yet awaited Him with the same hope. For such people the Messiah and the Kingdom were the meaning and center of their religious life.
But there was, apparently, yet another category of those awaiting the Messiah's coming, probably a very small one. These people waited for the Messiah because He was not only the main meaning, but the only meaning of their life. Or, more precisely, the Messiah and the Kingdom were in fact their life; they knew no other. Perhaps only such people could strictly be called Christians before Christ: they were already living by what exists in God's eternity but had not yet entered our fallen world. They lived, of course, as expectation and forefeeling, but they lived. And naturally each of these people would have been happy to see the Messiah with his own eyes. For them this was not the culmination of their own life, but its source, life itself opened to them in fullness.
Of course, this was not given to everyone: many had to touch death, Sheol, the world of shadows on the way to the fullness of the life they sensed beforehand. Simeon was happier: he saw the Messiah not from Sheol, where he had not yet had time to descend, but from the world of the living. And now even Sheol was no longer frightening to him, for time had already ended for him. The eternity of the Kingdom had begun, and with it the fullness of times.