KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 February
Mine eyes have seen thy salvation
It is a wonderfully complex and complicated biblical scene, and one which perhaps speaks to some of the complexities of our contemporary world. The story read in Chapel this week belongs to the great mid-winter feast sometimes known as Candlemas. Long before we defaulted to the inscrutable prognostications of rodents (Groundhog Day), there was this remarkable feast which signals the transition from the dead of winter to the hopes of spring and life. And it is a double-barrelled feast: the Presentation of Christ in the Temple commonly called the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin; in short, a feast of Christ and Mary.
All of the Marian festivals are tagged to the feast of Christ; Mary cannot be understood apart from Christ. As Luther beautifully puts it, “Mary does not want us to come to her but to Christ through her.” Paradoxically, it was the motto, too, for the Counter-Reformation Jesuits, Ad Jesum per Mariam. It states a basic principle of Christian orthodoxy. Here the feasts and festivals of Mary and Christ meet and are one.
Candlemas marks the fortieth day after Christmas and signals the transition from the light of Christmas to the life of Easter but only through the Passion of Christ which is also anticipated in this story. Candlemas is really all about the meeting of cultures, of ages, of peoples, of religions and hopes. For the Eastern Christian world it is known as “hypapante”, meaning ‘meeting.’ Here in the Temple in Jerusalem, aged Simeon watches and waits for the Lord’s Christ whom he beholds in the infant Christ carried in the arms of Mary and Joseph. He breaks forth into the Nunc Dimittis, the evening canticle of the Church’s liturgy. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace/ according to thy word./ for mine eyes have seen thy salvation/ which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples; / to be a light to lighten the Gentiles/ and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”
Such is the meeting of the Old Covenant and what will become the New Covenant. Here is the meeting of old and young, of man and woman, of God and man. His words speak about Christ but he also points to Christ’s passion and to the role of Mary in human redemption. “This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” A profound meeting, indeed.