Candlemas

CANDLEMAS

Nowadays, shops start celebrating Christmas as early as October, and as soon as Christmas Day arrives, they start celebrating the January sales.

Now that may well be the way the shopping world celebrates Christmas, but it is not the way the Christian Church celebrates Christmas.

Just as the Church celebrates Easter, the most important Christian festival, for forty days after Easter Sunday, culminating with the Ascension, so the Church celebrates Christmas, the second most important festival, for forty days culminating with Candlemas on the 2nd February.

That is why, in my last parish, the Christmas Crib was kept in position as a focus of devotion until Candlemas. Likewise, the Christmas decorations of holly and ivy were also kept in place.

In the Church's Lectionary, these Sundays are called "Sundays after Christmas" or "Sundays of Epiphany," conveying the theme of the revelation of God in Jesus, first to the Jewish world and then to the non-Jewish world.

So the Feast of Candlemas marks the climax of our Christmas celebrations, but at the same time looks forward to the suffering of Christ culminating on Good Friday. So the next three Sundays are called 'Sundays before Lent’, followed by the 'Sundays of Lent'. This is visibly marked by the white vestments of Christmas changing from today into green and then purple.

The service today therefore contains elements of joy as we complete the Christmas celebrations, and also of sadness as we look forward to Good Friday.

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Sometimes this feast is called the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as in the Book of Common Prayer, and sometimes the Meeting, as in the Orthodox churches, or Candlemas, each title focusing on a particular aspect of the feast. So let us look at each one of these names and see what they have to teach us.

However, having said that , it is easier said than done since St Luke has confused the issue in chapter 2 verses 22-35 of his Gospel, by conflating two distinctive Jewish rites concerning child birth into one.

PRESENTATION

Firstly, there is the ancient Jewish Rite of Presentation. This laid down that every first born male was sacred to God and therefore should be given back to God.

This was how the Jewish priesthood of the Temple was originally recruited, though the priesthood later came to be restricted only to the families of Levi and Aaron.

So, there developed later, the Rite of Redemption of the Firstborn, whereby, upon the payment of five shekels, the family could buy back their first born son from God.

It is still the practice for some people to make a thank-offering to the church upon the birth of a child thereby acknowledging that a child is a gift from God.

Today we shall express this with an Offertory Procession, whereby not only the bread and wine will be presented at the altar, but also our offerings as symbols of offering our lives afresh to God. In doing this, we are saying to God, "Take me, remake me, and use me as you will".

PURIFICATION

Secondly, the ancient Jewish Rite of Purification permitted a woman only to do house work, following the birth of a child. However, she was permitted to attend public worship once she had been purified, or cleansed, from the dirt then associated with child birth.

The method of purification was to offer at the Temple a sacrificial lamb. However, these tended to be expensive, since only those bought from the Temple smallholders were considered suitable. Needleless to say, the stallholders took advantage of their monopoly by charging exorbitant fees in order to line their own pockets.

However, poor people, if they could not afford a sacrificial lamb were permitted to offer a pair of doves. But these were not always available because they were migrating birds. So a pair of pigeons was also permitted, which is what Mary offered, therefore suggesting that she and Joseph were not particularly wealthy.

This rite is the origin of what was called in the Book of Common Prayer, "The Thanksgiving of Women after Child Birth, commonly called The Churching of Women." ln Common Worship the service is called "Thanksgiving after Childbirth".

When I was a curate in Liverpool in the 1960s, the first public thing a mother did was to go to church to be, as they used to say, 'churched’. Whether that still happens in the North West, I do not know.

Sadly, with the medical improvements in maternity care, and the consequent decline in infant mortality, there is a danger that we accept the safety of child bearing as natural and normal, and therefore choose not to see that God is involved in the creation of new life, and therefore it is no longer appropriate to offer him thanks. This is very sad.

THE MEETING

The Meeting is the name given to this event in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Orthodox churches. lt recalls the meeting of Mary with the Temple priest called Simeon.

For years, we are told, Simeon had looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. ln fact, it was his daily prayer that he should not die before he had seen the Messiah.

And now, as he took the baby Jesus into his arms, he recognised that he was indeed holding the long expected Messiah. Now, he was content to die.

So he exclaimed,

"Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace: according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation;

which you have prepared in the presence of all people:

a light for the revelation to the Gentiles;

and the glory of your people lsrael.”

Those of you familiar with the Daily Office of Evensong, will recognise that these are the words of the Nunc Dimmitis. They are often also used by the priest as a coffin is led out of the church at a funeral.

The words 'a light for the revelation to the Gentiles’, we have already just recalled, with a Gospel procession from the altar towards the main door of the church accompanied by candles, symbolising the light of the good news of God going out into the world.

We shall also recall these words of Simeon during the traditional Candlemas procession at the end of the service.

However, the perceptive Simeon also said to Mary in the Temple that day: ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed’. As a result, he told Mary ‘a sword will pierce your soul too'.

So the joyfulness of this final Christmas service, turns into sadness, as we recall Mary kneeling at the foot of the cross on Good Friday as her Son hangs dying upon it. 'A sword will pierce your heart too.’

Hence I said at the beginning, this service brings to an end the joyful celebration of Christmas and looks forward to sadness of Good Friday. Two human emotions are thus expressed, joyfulness and sadness. Joy we do not mind, but sadness, or pain, we prefer to do without.

Yet , like Mary, we cannot expect a sanitised life free of pain. It is how we respond to the pain in life that matters. Like Mary, we can use it as an opportunity of deepening our commitment to God and one another, or we can allow it to make us bitter and resentful, as we turn our back upon God.

CANDLEMAS

Candlemas is the Medieval name given to this feast in the church's year and goes back to at least 450 AD. In those days, worshippers would process to the churches in a pre-dawn service bearing lighted candles. Sadly, this was abolished at the time of the Reformation.

Today, the choir will leave the church in a procession bearing candles, as we recall the origin of Candlemas. They remind us that Christ is the liqht of the world, and our prayer will be that we may make visible in our lives the shining presence of Christ in the darkness of our secular world of today.

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Presentation, Purification, the Meeting and Candlemas, four different names given to the same event in our Lord's early life, which we recall in our worship today, as we conclude our celebration of Christmas and look forward to Good Friday.

Joyfulness and sadness, two very human experiences.

Lord God

We thank you for all your gifts to us;

Grant us to accept both pain and joy in faith and hope

and never fail in love to you and to our fellow men

through Jesus Christ, Amen.