A light to lighten
The transition from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, is an ancient and universal feature of education, itself a kind of enlightenment. In the fearful confusions of our world and day, we forget about its power and necessity. Yet, it is in our face through the readings in Chapel this week. The reading from the Prophet Malachi, proclaiming the idea of the Lord “whom ye seek” coming “suddenly to his temple,” was poignantly juxtaposed with Luke’s account of Christ’s first coming to the Temple forty days after his birth.
In the Christian understanding, it is a double-barrelled feast, a festival of Mary and a feast of Christ, his presentation – a kind of dedication of the first-born to God – and her purification – a kind of thanksgiving to God for childbirth. Presentation and Purification go together. It concerns how we are prepared for truth, for its presence in our lives. A refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap are Malachi’s images about the refining of metal, on the one hand, and of sheep’s wool, on the other. In the face of the truth of God, all that is not and not of God is stripped bare and made pure. Only as purified can we be awakened to the light that enlightens our humanity, the light which is life.
This week marks an intriguing and important transition, at least for the churches of the Western Christian world. It is the transition, the turning point, from Christmas, the festival of light, to Easter, the festival of life. February 2nd is not so much about groundhogs and their shadows, except to say that without light there can be no shadow. Candlemas, as the Presentation of Christ and the Purification of May is commonly known, marks that transition.
The lessons are wonderful and profound, complex and yet simple. We are called to be light but only in the light of Christ, without which we are really only darkness, indeed darkness upon darkness, abyss upon abyss. “In thy light shall we see light,” as the Psalmist puts it, emphasizing at once the idea that human knowing depends upon God’s knowing and our participation in that knowing.
In the story of the Presentation and the Purification we have the conjunction of the themes of illumination and purgation which ultimately belong to human perfection. It is really about what is made known of God in and through the things of our humanity. Joseph and Mary marvel at what Simeon says about the infant Christ. It is all of a piece with what we have seen and heard in the Christmas and Epiphany mystery about Mary keeping all these sayings about Jesus in her heart, about Mary keeping all the saying of Jesus in her heart, about Mary keeping all the things said and done by Christ. What is at issue is our attention to the things of God, of truth, that underlies each and every area of our lives.
That attention comes with a price. Mary marvels at what is said about Jesus by Simeon in what becomes the canticle known as the nunc dimittis – “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” He speaks about Mary herself in relation to Christ and his passion. “A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.” In the light and life of Christ our hearts are revealed but most especially through his embrace of human suffering and evil in his death and passion.
The interplay of light and life reminds us of their inescapable connection. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Light and life go together. They recall us to the relation between being and knowing and, in the lesson from Malachi, they extend to an explicit ethical necessity about our dealings with one another, to justice and our care for one another. This counters the fatal separation of the ethical from the political which bedevils our current discourse and world. As Plato teaches, the Good which both unites and is beyond being and knowing compels us to service and care, to justice which is about the good of all. The journey out of the cave from darkness to light, from shadows to reality, from ignorance to knowledge, equally demands the return to the cave, to the world of shadows and confusion. Why? Because justice seeks the good of everyone. It cannot be a private possession, something personal; it belongs to our life together in a community of learners. There is a critical and important difference between being chained in the cave and coming out and then going back into the cave. It is a way of facing the confusions and the darkness of our world. We are chained in our ignorance and freed in our commitment to knowledge and to learning and serving.
The meeting of Joseph and Mary and Christ with Simeon and Anna is at the heart of the idea of meeting, of the coming together of opposites, of men and women, of old and young, of God and man. For the Churches of Eastern Orthodoxy the whole scene is actually known as the meeting, hypapante, wonderfully signified in the icon of Abraham’s meeting with the three strangers or angels or even God as Trinity under the shade of the oak of Mamre. It is an exquisite scene. The Rublev icon in the Chapel bears silent yet eloquent testimony to its truth and meaning.
We can learn so much from one another both in structured and unstructured moments in the life of the School. It requires commitment to what is being shown to us, a commitment to truth and to its pursuit even in the face of our uncertainties. It is the antidote to despair. Against our fears and anxieties which paralyze and defeat us, there is light and life. Simeon’s words speak to our hearts. “A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.” It is universal, for all, and it commits us to one another.
(Rev’d) David Curry,
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy