by CCW | 2 February 2016 21:00
This is an ancient feast and an ecumenical feast, uniting both east and west. Its full title suggests something of its rich significance, a double feast in which we honour both our Lord and his Mother Mary, our Lady, in one festival. It is “The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, commonly called the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin”. But its simpler and more usual name is Candlemas. These are all terms and names which contain a host of associations.
Its most basic sense is the remembrance that Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to offer the required and ancient rituals of purification and the presentation of the first-born.
Luke alone gives us this story. The focus is on the encounter between the Child Jesus and the Old Man Simeon; a meeting which is rich in significance.
The Song of Simeon is the Nunc Dimittis, for instance, which has long been a feature of the Church’s evening sacrifice of prayer and praise. It is, we might say, the Song of Candlemas. It signifies the meeting of the Child Christ and aged Simeon. It signifies the bridge between the old and the new. In the Eastern Church this feast is known as “Hypapanti” – which means “meeting”.
The meeting signifies something more than just the passing away of the Old and the inauguration of something new; it captures as well the sense of fulfilment. There is the sense that what was looked for is actually more than what was expected.
Simeon and Anna are in the temple at Jerusalem waiting, watching and hoping. The overarching theme here is hope. What Simeon beholds in Christ is the hope of the Old Testament brought to an intensity of expression, to its fullness of meaning. It marks the inauguration of something new, ultimately we may say it is the Church; but this does not mean the eclipse of the old so much as its redemption and the purification of its intention; “a light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.” This is its ringing theme and song.
He sees in the child what Isaiah had seen as belonging to the vocation of Israel as a people; “a light to lighten the Gentiles,” a light for the world now in the midst of the world.
The whole of Israel in a way is recapitulated in the sacred and pure humanity of Jesus Christ, here carried in the arms of Mary, the pure mother of his pure humanity. How? Only by the grace of God. The way of divine preparation is here the grace of illumination.
The Word is in the flesh. The Light is embodied in the Child. The Son is presented in the temple.
Simeon takes the child into his arms. His Song, at the occasion of his meeting, is the Evensong of grace and salvation, of light and glory. His Song signals the reality of Christ – that he is the light of the world, a light that overcomes every form of darkness. And so this “meeting” is also a “feast of lights” – hence Candlemas.
The warm glow of the candles simply testifies to the greater light that “emanates for all times from the person of Jesus” (Ratzinger). Candles signify that we are to be the bearers of that light, that same light that Simeon saw in the infant Christ. And we are to be the bearers of that light into the world for it is a light to lighten the Gentiles – the peoples of the world. Those who have received that light must then become the bearers of that light to all around them. Such is our vocation.
We find ourselves in that light of understanding, the light which counters and checks the darkness within and without us. We may turn our backs on that light and become our own darkness, but, quite literally, that would mean to will the darkness, to choose the darkness over the light.
Candlemas, in the richness of its allusions and associations, calls us to love the light that illumines the hope of the world. All our desires find their place of meeting in the light of Christ who has come to his temple. It is here that we may find him, in the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated, in prayer and praise, in sacrifice and service.
Fr. David Curry
Candlemas 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/02/02/sermon-for-candlemas-2/
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