“Another parable put he forth unto them”
Epiphany runs out this year with talk, a parable, words rather than signs and wonders. Perhaps it is words that are the real signs and wonders. Epiphany season suggests that we are constituted for thought and it is often words that convey ideas and thoughts to us. But what kind of words?
“As all of the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time, flowers in the spring, corn in the summer, and apples in the autumn, so the fruit of winter is talk.” Basil the Great, one of the great philosophical theologians of the early Church, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, captures well the point of our considerations and an essential aspect of our liturgy. Epiphany is all about the light of divinity, light conveyed by words which are sown in our hearts like seeds upon the ground. But what kinds of seeds, what kind of words will be made manifest in us, in our lives? The seed and words of good wheat or the seeds and words of deceit and despair? This is the question that the Gospel presents to us while reminding us that Epiphany is equally about judgment. The judgment is God’s judgment not the limited and biased judgment of humans. That is the good news actually. We are held accountable to the word of God. That is the point of the parable.
It is complemented by the Epistle reading from Colossians which exhorts us to put on “mercy and compassion” “forebearing one another, and forgiving one another”, important spiritual concepts that belong to our living in the light of God’s truth made manifest to us in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ. In a way, it is all about the words. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another”, as Paul puts it. Epiphany is the season of teaching. The words are words of purpose and meaning. The fruit of winter is talk that is meaningful and purposeful, serious talk that recalls us to who we are in the light of God revealed in Jesus Christ. “In thy light shall we see light”, is our constant prayer but that means an openness to the teachings of Christ, to his talk to us while among us. That is the condition of his epiphany in us.
February. What is it with February? It appears to be the dreaded month of unease and anxiety, of fear and foreboding. Not the best time to make life-decisions, the former headmaster of King’s-Edgehill used to remark and the present headmaster, too, has wanted to counter the blues and the blahs of February that statistically mean more disciplinary problems. So what’s with February?
Sometimes we need a wider perspective. February is par excellence the month of the bleak, mid-winter. Yet it is really transitional and I suspect that times of transition are often peculiar challenges to us. But just consider what February means at least in the perspective of the various cultures of the western hemisphere. For the ancient Romans, whose calendar admitted only ten months, what has come to be called February is derived from the festivals of death and purification signalling the beginning of the new year with March 1st. Thus February was about coming to an end and to a beginning. February 2nd, for instance, actually marks ‘the cross-quarter day’, the day that falls immediately between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It marks a transition but one which orients us towards spring and in the Christian understanding towards the spring of our souls in Christ’s resurrection.
The Celtic traditions celebrate Imbolc, marking that sensibility, too, about light pointing us to the advent of spring. Christian cultures took over some of these notions and ideas. Thus February 2nd celebrates Candlemas, a feast of light signifying life. It marks the transition from light to life, from the light of Christ’s birth and epiphany to the life of Easter through the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. March 25th would become the new beginning of the Christian year, the day which marks the Annunciation, Christ’s conception in the womb of Mary.
The medieval Christian world expresses wonderfully our human interaction with nature. The signs of the zodiac which correspond to the seasons of the year are complemented by the labours of the month. What is the traditional labour for February? Sitting by the fire! Sitting by the fire in conversation, perhaps?
This sensibility contributes to a myriad of reflections about winter that are about our ability to deal positively with the realities of winter, something that seems to have been lost in the present. We have come a long way, it seems, from Shakespeare’s picture of winter in Love’s Labours Lost. “When icicles hang by the wall/And Dick the Shepherd blows his nail,/And Tom bears logs into the hall,/ And milk comes frozen home in pail,/ When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul” – all images that in some sense or other we can relate to as belonging to the harsh realities of winter, not to mention the further effects on us such as “coughing drowns the parson’s saw … and Marion’s nose looks red and raw.” But for all of that there is the sense of comfort. “Then nightly sings the staring owl,/ To-whit! To-who! – a merry note/ While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.” Somehow we can deal with winter. We don’t have to be defeated by February.
February begins, really, with the rich and complex feast of Candlemas, light signifying life, a turn from Christmas to Easter, to the idea of the light of life that overcomes the darkness of death. Our readings today are about that turn, at once an ending and a beginning, the transition towards the light and life of Easter upon which all our lives and all our talk depend.
The idea that “the fruit of winter is talk” is the counter to the forms of violence and destruction that we have witnessed in our own country with the killing of people at prayer in a mosque in Quebec. Instead of words of meaning and respect, there is violence and hate. Candlemas marks a transition. Today, too, is about an ending and beginning that challenges us to meaningful talk. That is the fruit of winter – the talk that is about the truth of our common humanity, about dignity and respect. Such is Christ’s talk to us. Let it be his talk in us.
“Another parable put he forth unto them”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany V, 2017