Taking a light to Candlemas

On 2 February, the Christian Church celebrates the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, but for at least a thousand years it’s been called ‘Candlemas’.

         Behind the Jewish rite described in the Bible lies the Jewish tradition that women were considered unclean after giving birth and therefore were not allowed to enter the Temple (see Leviticus 12:2–8). After forty days of ritual purification (sixty if the child was a girl), women were brought to the Temple or Synagogue to be purified. Only after this ceremony could a woman re‐enter a Jewish religious service. 2 February therefore commemorates the Mary re‐entering Jewish religious life after giving birth to Jesus.

    Incidentally, Luke’s account of Mary’s sacrifice at the Temple (Luke 2:24) shows just how poor the Holy Family were: they offered birds rather than the usual lamb, and only poorer families were allowed by Leviticus 12:8 to offer a smaller sacrifice.

    Candlemas also marks the ritual presentation of the baby Jesus to God in the Jerusalem Temple. Luke in his Gospel says that Jesus was met by an old man, Simeon, and an even older woman, Anna. They both recognised in the baby Jesus the long-promised Messiah. Simeon then held the baby Jesus and gave a blessing in the form of a song that we today call the Nunc Dimittis:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace
according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

    Taking their lead from Simeon’s prayer, Christians from about the fourth century onwards have celebrated the festival with light—for example, in the past, the Church’s candles for the year were blessed on this day, so 2 February became literally ‘the Candle mass.’ By the middle of the fifth century, candles were lit in people’s homes on this day to symbolise that Jesus Christ was the light of the world. They also took a year’s supply of candles to the Church to be blessed during the Candlemas services.

     2 February is also one of the great cross‐quarter days which make up the wheel of the year as it falls midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In many traditions it is considered the beginning of spring as the sky becomes lighter.

I need servicing

It’s been a month characterised by variety. I’ve worked in a great many Churches during this past month. I’ve led services of baptism, wedding, funeral; some of the services were Eucharist, and many weren’t. I’ve attended and led prayer meetings. I’ve also led services in the Crematorium, nursing homes, and in people’s living rooms. I’ve led long services and short services, services in which there were only two of us and services with hundreds present. In every case, I’ve been struck by the ways in which every service was different. But I’ve been struck even more by what remains the same.

    During any formal service, those participating explicitly seek to come before God and then enter his presence. We do so because the service is for Him and seeks to tell Him why.

     We enter the presence of God in order to put right anything that is wrong. Commonly, we think of sins and the actions which harmed others. It’s important to realise that we also harm God insofar as we ignore Him, and pretend He doesn't matter.

    And we enter the presence of God in order to understand more about Him. As we know God better, we will find that He becomes bigger, wiser, and more loving. We will also sense that our attitudes to God change with time: we prepare before worship and we aim to give Him more of our attention during the formal act of worship.

    Those of us who attend (or lead) services often will find that constant repetition of words and phrases acts something like a hammer drill: they are forced deep into the sub-conscious parts of the mind where they become more readily available than before. Having the words stored in the sub-conscious also has the effect of giving the words more meaning, more depth. 

The colours of Advent

In most western denominations, violet is the correct liturgical colour during Advent; so the priestly vestments, altar-frontal, and lectern trappings, etc., are all violet. Some churches denote Advent and Lent with differing shades of purple: Lent employs a dark and somewhat dry shade (while the Advent colour is lighter, richer and seems to glow more. The former colour is like the permanganate beloved by school chemistry teachers while the latter seeks to emulate Tyrian Purple.

      It is common to hear the ideas underlying Advent discussed in terms of this violet colour. They centre round Jesus returning as judge and king; and earthly rulers demonstrate their power with expensive trappings to prove their wealth. And the most expensive dye in the ancient world was Tyrian Purple, the use of which became the ultimate status symbol. It was expensive because it derived from the Murex brandaris water snail, and twelve-thousand of them yields no more than 1.4 g of pure dye, which is ‘enough to colour only the trim of a single garment’.[1] The Imperial Byzantium court issued laws to control the production of the dye and restrict tightly those who could wear it. By the late ninth-century, a child born to a reigning emperor was declared to be porphyrogenitos, ‘born in the purple’. So the Church anticipates the Parousia with purple.

      Blue is an alternative colour for Advent in the old Sarum rite, although this tradition is possibly diminishing in usage.

      The third Sunday of Advent is called ‘Gaudete’ Sunday. The name comes from the Latin ‘to rejoice’ but also from the first line of the Introit (the traditional entrance prayer) for the Mass or Worship Service for that day. In the Churches espousing a more liturgical tradition, liturgical colour of Gaudete Sunday is rose; but this colour causes problems. The obvious change from violet signals a slight pause from the penitential spirit of Advent. It is therefore natural for the third candle of the Advent wreath, when representing joy, to take this hue rather than purple. But the Churches following the second set of Advent themes above, will prefer to use rose for the Virgin Mary; the message of John the Baptist is certainly not a respite from the theme of penitence.

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[1] David Jacoby, ‘Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2004, 58, 197–240. He cites this nugget on p. 210.