The Solemnity of the Presentation of Christ
in the Temple - Candlemas

Malachi, 3:1-4
Hebrews, 2:14-18
Luke, 2:22-40

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Early this Wednesday morning, as the sun comes up, a guy in a top hat and an ill-fitting tuxedo will step onto a platform in front of five to ten thousand, somewhat inebriated and frozen, onlookers. They will have all come out to the woods in a remote corner of western Pennsylvania to watch this guy pull a rat out of a hole. Then someone will declare whether this rodent can see his shadow, and this declaration will be met either with spirited cheers or boos. It gets even sillier – just about every television so-called ‘news' show in America will report Wednesday evening what happened.

I suspect that more American Christians have heard of Punxsutawney Phil than of Simeon and Anna, and that more associate February 2nd with Groundhog Day than with Candlemas. Why is there so much veneration of a uninspiring, sluggish pest whose proper destiny, so often fulfilled, is to be roadkill? I think that it's because ultimately Groundhog Day – albeit a secular, even pagan event – appeals to a lot of the same human longings and needs as Candlemas.

The word ‘February' comes from the Latin februa, meaning ‘to purify.' For the ancient Romans, February was a time for purifying, for cleansing, in preparation for the spring-time renewal of life. Pagan Roman purification rites involved lighting candles to celebrate the return of light and the shortening of long winter nights.1

The Church grafted her belief and worship onto the pagan rites. Christians associate the lighting and blessing of candles with the light of Christ, the light that shines in darkness. Candlemas ceremonies proclaim Christ, the light to lighten the Gentiles, the Gentiles who before Christ lived in darkness. Candles and light symbolism are especially appropriate during Epiphany, the season we celebrate Christ's manifestation of himself, his revealing of himself, his offering of salvation to the Gentiles.

Coming at the end of Epiphany, Candlemas concludes the Christmas season and directs our attention toward Lent and Easter. Despite today's snow, it anticipates the end of the cold darkness of winter and the coming light and warmth of spring.

Likewise, Groundhog Day ceremonies represent our first formal and corporate anticipation of spring, our longing for spring renewal.2 Through the ages, human beings have noticed that sometimes animals can predict weather, and in some places we have developed a popular, sentimental faith in the power of animals to predict the future. Our brains numbed by the cold, we have sought encouragement and wisdom in animals, even in vermin. Centuries ago, "weather prediction by animal watching became allied with the custom of lighting candles on the day of the Purification of the Virgin Mary."3

Even some early Christians thought the weather on Candlemas Day signaled what was to come. They had proverbs like:

If Candlemas is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.4

Another old proverb:

The badger peeps out of his hole on Candlemas Day
and when he finds it's snowing, walks abroad;
but if he sees the sun shining, he draws back into the hole.5

In America, the badger devolved to the groundhog, and, alas, we have the association of Candlemas with the lowly groundhog. But whether we think of it as Candlemas or Groundhog Day, the day is about expectation, about emerging from a dull, slumbering winter and stirring "up life's juices redolent with good things to come;" it's about the fulfilment of hope; it's about seeking renewed life.6

That's the underlying theme in today's gospel. S. Luke has composed a story combining two rituals and how two people, Simeon and Anna, responded to them. According to the Jewish law, the mother of a Jewish baby boy was ritually impure for forty days after the birth. The purification rite required the sacrifice of a lamb and a pigeon. However, in cases of hardship, as was the case for the Holy Family, two pigeons or two doves was a sufficient sacrifice for purification.

The purification ritual reminds us that Jesus came from the poor, that God fully identified with the poor. We easily overlook that. We most certainly don't like to identify with the poor. We spend so much of our lives and energies to separate ourselves from the poor, to insulate ourselves from the attendant smells and miseries and humiliations and discomforts and degradations. Our instinct is to disregard and even to have contempt for the poor. Jesus challenges us to open our hearts.

At the catechumenate last Wednesday, we talked about Christian disciplines, such as fasting, and one of the spiritual values of fasting is that it helps us to identify with the poor; it helps us to love and understand all people, not just people like ourselves. As we approach Lent and consider what spiritual disciplines we'll be assuming, we should keep in mind that the point of spiritual disciplines is not simply to deepen our devotion, but also to improve our relationships with other people, our appreciation for them. Deepening our love of God necessarily implies deepening our love of other people. Spiritual disciplines are not private matters, not something between only us and God; they have a social impact. Spiritual disciplines should expand our sympathies and open our hearts – not close them or make us feel superior to others.

The other Jewish ritual in today's gospel was the presentation, or the dedication, of the first-born to God. The first-born son was 'holy to the Lord.' A Jewish couple had to buy back, or redeem, their first-born son with the payment of five shekels to the Temple authorities. The ritual reminded the Jews that the angel of death had passed over their first-born sons in Egypt and that God had freed them from their bondage. Luke says that the family presented Jesus in the Temple, but he does not describe the presentation. Luke likes the idea of Jesus not being bought back, but belonging wholly to the Lord. Luke likes the idea of Jesus remaining in the Temple, being about his Father's business.7

Luke inserts this story of the purification of Mary and the presentation of Jesus to show that the Holy Family were faithful, observant Jews and to show how two other faithful Jews, Simeon and Anna, responded to Jesus. Simeon, a devout old man, filled with the Holy Spirit, holds the baby Jesus, new life, in his arms and declares that he is holding his salvation. Simeon thanks God that he can depart in peace, that he can have a peaceful death because in the coming of Jesus, God has fulfilled Simeon's patient expectation.

We venerate Simeon and Anna for their steadfast faith in waiting for God to fulfill their hope. Both had patiently waited for God to act, all the while serving God in the Temple with prayer and fasting. They didn't know when, but they knew God would act. In Jesus coming to them in the Temple, God acted to fulfill their hopes and to renew their lives. And those of us who have come again and again and again to this Temple know that renewal.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1 Anthony Aveni, The Book of the Year, OUP (2003), p. 35.
2 Ibid., p. 32.
3 Ibid., p. 34.
4 Ibid., p. 36
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid. p. 46
7 Stephen Farris, The Lectionary Commentary: The Third Readings: The Gospels, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., Eerdmans (2001), p. 302.