KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 February
Light in the dark, Love in the ruins
Not the same thing as love in ruins! Sunday just past was Candlemas. Whatever one makes of groundhogs and their shadows, Candlemas marks a significant transition of the year in a number of different registers: astronomically, historically, socially and religiously. It is the meeting, hypapante to use its Greek title, a coming together of Law and Prophecy, of the Old Testament and the New, a meeting of ancient Simeon and aged Anna the Prophetess and the very young, of the infant Christ and his young mother, Mary, in short, of men and women and a child. A meeting in the Temple in Jerusalem.
The full title itself joins together the practices of Eastern Orthodox and Western Christianity. The former marks that day as the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, forty days after Christmas; the latter as the Feast of the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin; in short, a joint festival of Mary and Jesus. Since the fifth century, it has been observed with lighted candles, and, hence, the more convenient moniker, Candlemas. It was a 17th century Anglican Bishop, John Cosin who joined the titles in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the mother Prayer Book of the Anglican Communion.
Candlemas looks backward to Christmas and ahead to Holy Week and Easter. As such it marks the transition from light to life. Astronomically, February 2nd is one of the cross-quarter days in between Christmas Day, Dec 25th, and Lady Day, the Annunciation, March 25th. It falls roughly half-way between the winter solstice (December 21st) and the spring or vernal equinox (March 20th). Already we have seen some of the quantum leaps in sunlight and the lengthening of the days.
Yet the themes of Light and Life meet in the greater wonder of Love. Christmas in the Christian understanding never loses sight of Christ’s sacrifice and thus to the underlying principle of the divine love which seeks the ultimate good of our humanity, even in the face of the disorders, chaos, and evils of our hearts and our world.