Year: 2023

“Go ye also into the vineyard”

With the ‘Gesima Sundays’ we are turned to the dust and ground of creation, quite literally, it seems, even if frozen and covered with ice and swirling snow. The Latin term gesima as in Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima belongs to pre-Lent; they already anticipate the quadragesima, the forty days of Lent excluding Sundays. The ‘Gesima Sundays’ recall different patterns historically about the numbering of the forty days of Lent in terms of not just excluding Sundays but other days which also marked a break from the fast of Lent. Septuagesima refers to the week of the seventieth day before Easter; Sexagesima, the week of the sixtieth day, and Quinquagesima, the week of the fiftieth day. Thus they orient us towards Holy Week and Easter.

But they do so in a preparatory way by providing a kind of treatise on moral life in terms of the classical virtues as transformed by the theological virtues, principally, charity or love. Temperance and justice are set before us today, then courage and prudence, on Sexagesima Sunday and, then, on Quinquagesima Sunday, we are launched into the journey of Lent as the pilgrimage of Love by way of the theological virtues highlighted most profoundly by Paul in his great hymn of love. The pilgrimage of our souls to God requires illumination, purgation and union or perfection. These ‘Gesima’ Sundays belong to that journey.

Just as Candlemas marks the transition from Christmas to Easter, so these Sundays mark a transition by adding to the Epiphany theme of illumination the themes of purgation and perfection or union that ultimately belong to the disciplines of Lent. But on all three Sundays, we are turned to the ground of our lives, first, in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard of creation; secondly, in the parable of the sower and the seed in its question about what kind of ground are we? and, thirdly, in the idea of going up to Jerusalem understood as the meaning of our lives in spiritual pilgrimage, a going up with Jesus in terms of the teaching or illumination about the end and purpose of our lives, the teaching about the purgation of all that belongs to the sinfulness of our lives, and the teaching about what belongs to our perfection, namely, our being with Christ in and through the drama of his Passion. “We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says.

What is wonderful about today’s readings is that they are really confessional. Paul is speaking about temperance or self-mastery of the things of the body and the need for self-control but with an awareness of the danger of hypocrisy – saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. Hypocrisy casts a wide net in which we are all entangled. This is a reminder of the imperfection and incompleteness of our own lives that should put a check on the forms of self-righteous judgmentalism so prevalent in our world and in which we are all complicit in some way or another. Deploring the problem of climate change and pointing fingers of blame at others, for instance, while remaining beholden to our devices in their massive consumption of energy and to our reliance and sense of entitlement about air travel, to take but two instances.

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“A Light to lighten the Gentiles”

This is an ancient feast and an ecumenical feast, uniting both east and west. Its full title suggests something of its rich significance. It is a double feast in which we honour both Jesus, 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.” For Eastern Christianity, it is known as hypapante, meaning meeting. 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 sacrifices of purification and 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 and the aged Anna; a meeting 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 or the bridge between the old and the new; thus the significance of hypapante or meeting in the Eastern Church.

The meeting signifies something more than just the passing away of the old and the inauguration of something new; it captures the sense of fulfillment. 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 that of hope. And 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 with its emphasis upon universality.

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