Homily for Candlemas
Homily for Candlemas - February 7, 2010
Today we’re celebrating Candlemas, which, in the usual way of St. Nick’s, we’ve informally transferred from its proper day on February 2. And this is one of those lovely Christian traditions that seems to have pre-Christian origins. Candlemas falls each year right at the midpoint between the winter equinox and the summer solstice, when the days start to get longer. One of the ways that was celebrated was with festivals of fire and light dedicated to the sun or to a particular deity.
Because these festivals seem to have been especially popular in Rome, the bishop of Rome converted it into a Christian holiday in the 4th century. And he was clever about it. The popular candle processions remained, but the light now represented the light of Christ. It also became the day on which all the candles for the church year were to be blessed. For its Biblical basis, our story for today, in which Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Jewish Temple and present him to the old priest, Simeon, was also added to the day’s festivities.
It’s interesting that, as Christianity spread out and different traditions within it developed, those different traditions each focused on distinct parts of today’s story for their celebration of Candlemas.
For instance, in the Roman Catholic Church, Candlemas is also known as the Feast of the Purification. Roman Catholics focus on the beginning of the story, where Mary appears in the Temple for her rites of purification. According to the Jewish laws that Mary would have followed, a woman had to wait forty days after giving birth before she could leave her home, after which she had to present herself for her ritual purification. (As I think I said last year, think of it sort of like a less enlightened version of our maternity leave!)
In Protestant Churches, Candlemas is also called The Presentation of Our Lord, which comes from the next part of our passage where Mary presents Jesus to the priest. This practice also harks back to Jewish laws, which required that a mother and father hand their baby over to the priest, who then had to be paid before giving their child back. I’ve always thought this would be an interesting way to raise money for St. Nicks … except that it was mostly symbolic, and they had an overly generous sliding scale. For instance, if you were rich, you had to give a lamb as ransom to the priest, but if you were poor, like Joseph and Mary, you only had to give the priest two turtledoves. (We much prefer pledges here.)
Finally, there’s the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which calls today “The Meeting.” This is a reference to the last part of the story, in which the priest Simeon sees the child Jesus and burst out into the song that became known as the “Song of Simeon.” Which, by the way, is what we just read in the procession, and is used in the morning and evening prayer services of all our traditions.
So that’s how this came to be a Christian festival, and although emphases of the story differ across traditions, many have retained some sort of blessing of candles and, in many cases, also a procession of candles more or less like the one we did this morning.
I guess every year I’m struck by something new in this service. This year it was the theme of passing on of God’s love from one generation to the next: the young parents Mary and Joseph to their son Jesus, but especially Simeon, the old man who sees in Jesus light for the future and sort of passes the torch in this moment.
Someday we’ll be the Simeon figure, having to relinquish our light to those who come after us. May be do it half as graciously as he did, with faith that those who follow us will carry on our work as well if not better than we could.
But for now, we’re the ones to whom the light has been passed - from Simeon to Jesus to the disciples to their followers and all the way down to us: we have the responsibility to bear Christ’s light to the world.
One of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book, which we say on special saints days, reads: “[We give you thanks] For the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all your saints, who have been the chosen vessels of your grace, and the lights of the world in their generations.”
In the Protestant sense of us all being saints, today’s celebration reminds us that we are the lights of the world in our generations. And as we carry these candles home, or just watch the days lengthen and the light linger, let’s resolve to shine our lights as brightly as we can - for others and for God.
