Although we, out of necessity are keeping it today, Tuesday, February 2^nd, is actually the Feast of Candlemas – one of my favourite days in the whole of the church’s year, because the ceremonies help so wonderfully to reinforce the message of the moment.  As the name suggests, it’s the day on which, traditionally, all the church candles that were to be used during the coming year, were blessed at the Eucharist – a custom that goes back a great many centuries, and sometimes took more elaborate forms, involving candlelit processions either before, or during the service, or else people bringing their own candles from home to be blessed, and so on. You can imagine that in darker, more northern regions than ours here in Thailand, this was probably an important day in the calendar, and, in fact, some of those more elaborate services do indeed come from churches in Ireland and Northern England.  Unfortunately though, it is neither practicable nor possible for us to do this sort of thing here, so we’ll simply have to imagine the splendour and the spectacle, which might otherwise dramatically be unfolding before our very eyes this afternoon!

Candlemas is also the day on which we celebrate several final events in the infancy of Jesus, which is why some churches wait until now to put away all the Christmas decorations, and in particular the crib tableau, thereby signalling the end the Christmas season!   The most famous event in Jesus’ infancy that we celebrate today though, is his Presentation in the Temple, as foretold by the Prophet Malachi, which we heard in our 1^st Reading, with John the Baptist, (who was just 6 months older than Jesus) as the forerunner.  “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple”.  According to Luke’s Gospel, it was the custom of the day to present your first-born son to the priest, in the Temple in Jerusalem, forty days after his birth, and you would bring with you a sacrifice – a lamb and a dove, or, if you couldn’t afford that and were poor, like Jesus’ family, just two pigeons!  The first-born belonged to the Lord, according to the Book of Exodus at the start of Chapter 13, but then the Book of Numbers, in Chapter 18, tells us that the child could be ‘redeemed’, or ‘bought back’, by the payment of 5 shekels – sounds horribly like an ecclesiastical pawn shop, doesn’t it?   Some, of course, were not, but remained in the service of God, and you’ll doubtless recall the account of the boy Samuel, living with Levi at the Temple when the Lord called him, which we last heard only a fortnight ago!

The Jewish Commentary on the Christian Gospels states though, that presenting your child after forty days like this, was not actually a requirement of Jewish Law at that particular time.  But in the life of any new parent, bringing your new baby to church, to show it off to your priest and fellow parishioners might as well be a religious rite; it’s so exciting and momentous!  It might well be asked if Mary, when she was recalling these infancy stories to the Gospel writer Luke, (because, remember that tradition says, that Luke’s infancy stories are Mary’s memoirs – the stories she told him in her old age, that he then wrote down in his Gospel), the event was just so embellished in her memory (dementia, do I sense some of you thinking?) that she mistook her first trip out with her baby for an important religious ceremony.  Who knows?

Then, of course, we encounter once again the chronology problems – the Flight into Egypt was seemingly two years in duration, in order to escape from Herod, so how on earth could Jesus and his parents, Mary & Joseph, possibly have been in Jerusalem a mere 40 days after the child’s birth?   However, such anomalies do not need to concern us now, least we lose sight of the all-important messages in today’s gospel.

Candlemas is also sometimes known as the ‘Feast of the Purification’, emphasizing Mary’s ritual re-entry into society, after a forty-day period of seclusion, following the birth of her child. This was the Jewish law of the day, when women were presented in the Temple, for a purification ceremony, before going back out into the world.  In parts of the church where devotion to Mary was strong, this is the event people would have associated with Candlemas more than the Presentation of Christ himself.  It would also have brought to people’s minds a once-familiar custom, called the ‘Churching of Women’, where a new mother is welcomed back into the congregation following childbirth.  In the Anglican or Episcopal tradition, we still have a prayer for ‘the Churching of Women’ in the Book of Common Prayer, rooted in this story, and in those ancient laws which deemed a woman ‘unclean’ after childbirth, on account of the blood shed in the process.  Interesting particularly for us here in Thailand though, is to note that, in Buddhism, no woman may ever touch a monk on account of her perceived ‘uncleanness’ through the menstrual process!

The final event in Jesus’ infancy that we mark at Candlemas, is what is called ‘The Meeting’, or the encounter between the old man Simeon and the infant Jesus. It’s a poignant scene: Mary and Joseph bring their new-born son to the Temple, and this old man, probably all but blind physically, somehow has the spiritual insight to see something special – some scrap of hope for the future – in this forty-day-old child. The medieval artists invariably portrayed both Jesus and Mary with a halo about their heads, so you might well be forgiven for wondering how old Simeon, even allowing for his dimming eyesight, could possibly have failed to spot such a give-away, but in reality it would almost certainly not have been even remotely like that.  God had endowed the old man with the ability to perceive Jesus, despite the appearance, to all intents and purposes, of being just like any other baby, and promised Simeon that he should not die before this came to pass.  The words that he uttered after that encounter are known as the ‘Song of Simeon’ or, to give it its Latin title,  ‘Nunc Dimittis’:  “Lord, now you can let your servant go in peace, just as you promised; because my eyes have seen the salvation, which you have prepared for all nations to see; a light to lighten the pagans, and the glory of your people Israel”, and this has been sung for centuries the world over at evening prayer services – Compline in the first instance, but later also as the second canticle at Evening Prayer (or Evensong) in the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition.

So then, these are the three Biblical events that inspire Candlemas: the Presentation, the Purification, and the Meeting.  If you’re wondering what links these events with the blessing of the candles, it’s Simeon’s reference to Jesus being ‘the light to lighten the Gentiles’.  There is also a tradition that says that Mary carried a candle, as she processed to the Temple – you see that in a lot of the artistic depictions of this scene, though that is another embellishment that can, indeed, be attributed to the flights of fancy of the Italian painters of the High Renaissance!

The celebration of candles and light probably also comes from an event in the natural world on Candlemas Day – another link with the pre-Christian, pagan religions: this is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox; the moment at which spring – just barely – begins to impinge, and the very first signs of new life appear.  You might well be familiar with the rhyme:  “If Candlemas day be sunny and bright, winter again will show its might.  If Candlemas day be cloudy and grey, winter soon will pass away.” This is entirely appropriate, because it’s rather what happens with the people in these stories. Mary comes out of her post-natal seclusion.  Simeon awakens to new hope.  For both, life begins to stir, and the end of a spiritual or emotional winter is in sight.

And that is God’s promise to us on this, and every Candlemas Day: that whatever we’re going through, light and hope will win out in the end over darkness and despair. Never have we needed that message more than in this time of the Covid pandemic!  Winter isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination in the Northern hemisphere – indeed, we’ve had a sharp reminder of that only these past weeks here in Thailand – more so in other parts of South-East Asia, and we still have the long season of Lent ahead of us, before we reach the fullness of spring, and the rebirth of Easter, but for now we have the traditional blessing of the candles, to remind us of God’s promise to see us through the darkness, and lead us into the light.  ‘Light’, you may recall, was the great buzz-word of Advent, and Jesus is indeed the light of the world.  Let us pray therefore, that the light of the gospel will shine in all our hearts, and that for us, Jesus will truly be the light which will guide us on our way, in the joy of his service.  Amen.