Sermon 26th January 2025

Malachi 3. 1 – 5

Luke 2. 22 – 40

The Feast of Candlemas

Fr Alex

 

The Angel-lights of Christmas morn,

Which shot across the sky,

Away they pass at Candlemas,

They sparkle and they die.

 

Comfort of earth is brief at best,

Although it be divine;

Like funeral lights for Christmas gone

Old Simeon’s tapers shine.

 

So begins St John Henry Newman’s poem, ‘Candlemas,’ written in 1849.  It might seem a little gloomy as we fill this church with candlelight for this beautiful feast day.

But of course these lights are lit in farewell, as today is the last day of the long Christmas and Epiphany season.  The great cycle of the Nativity began all the way back on the 25^th of March last year with the Feast of the Annunciation; the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will conceive the Christ.  Nine months later, we celebrated that birth at Christmas—and today that celebration comes to an end in one final blaze of light

Today we turn from one Church season to another: away from Christmas, and towards Lent and Easter.

But despite that poignant note of farewell, Candlemas is such a lovely feast, partly because it reminds us of the way our Church calendar aligns so beautifully with the natural rhythms and cycles of the seasons.

Because the same sort of movement is happening in the natural world.  Today marks midwinter, and what’s called a cross-quarter day; the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  At last we can turn away from the dark and cold of winter, and each day now brings us closer to the explosion of new life in spring.  (I realise I’ve probably doomed us to two weeks of ice by saying that!)

The rhythms of nature and the rhythms of the Church work in a beautiful harmony to keep our eyes fixed on the Light that we celebrate today.  As it grows dark and cold in December, we’re able to celebrate the gift of this Light at Christmas; then as we enter into the darkness of Christ’s Passion, the world around us wakes up and encourages us with light and warmth and new life.

One of the first signs that something is changing at this time of year is the appearance of snowdrops: sometimes known as ‘Candlemas Bells,’ or ‘Our Lady’s Tapers.’  I’m particularly excited at the sight of snowdrops this year, because after last spring I very hopefully dug up a big clump of them from a corner of the vicarage garden, and separated them out.  And I’m delighted to report I didn’t kill them, and they’re all coming up in a long line in front of the house, and starting to flower.

These flowers are a wonderful promise of the new life of spring; and when we reach the beginning of spring, the spring equinox, it will be on or around the 25^th of March, the Feast of the Annunciation; and with the visit of Gabriel to Mary, the whole cycle of the mystery of the Incarnation begins again.

So today is a moment of crossing over; a time of intersection; a gateway day.

And our Gospel reading is rich in these themes.  God makes himself present in Christ at the intersection of things; Simeon and Anna, both of a great age; the infant Jesus, a newborn.  Life’s dawn meets life’s evening; and life’s evening meets life’s dawn.

Simeon’s song of the fulfilment of his longing, turns abruptly from the celebration of the “light to lighten the gentiles,” to something much more dark and doubtful; “a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”  Light meets darkness, and darkness meets light, as we turn from the Incarnation to the Passion.

We will capture this sense of crossing-over in our liturgy at the end of our Mass today.  We will light up our candles in one last blaze of Christmas joy.  Then we will literally turn away from this crib, and towards the font: the big stone font, a symbol of Christ’s tomb, and the experience of Lent and Passiontide that awaits us.

But if the font is a symbol of Christ’s tomb, it is also a symbol of his resurrection: for as we know, after three days that tomb of death was found to be empty.  And just as we turn today in the natural world from the death of winter to the new life of spring, so we face this tomb in the knowledge that from it springs the new and wonderful life of Easter.

Although we will extinguish our candles one last time, and the light will seem to disappear—and the darkness will grow ever deeper as Lent gives way to Passiontide and the cross and the tomb—another candle will be our sign that the darkness does not have the final word.

The Paschal Candle, the light of Easter, is our pledge that even when our waiting seems long and dark and hopeless, there is still light: light that shines in the disappointments and despairs of life; and even the darkness of Good Friday cannot overcome it.

The rest of St John Henry Newman’s Candlemas poem brings all this together beautifully, and I’ll read you the whole thing now.  It weaves together the liturgical year using the theme of light as the thread; light that will sustain us in the long season of Lent.

 

The Angel-lights of Christmas morn,

Which shot across the sky,

Away they pass at Candlemas,

They sparkle and they die.

 

Comfort of earth is brief at best,

Although it be divine;

Like funeral lights for Christmas gone

Old Simeon’s tapers shine.

 

And then for eight long weeks and more,

We wait in twilight grey,

Till the high candle sheds a beam

On Holy Saturday.

 

We wait along the penance-tide

Of solemn fast and prayer;

While song is hush’d, and lights grow dim

In the sin-laden air.

 

And while the sword in Mary’s soul

Is driven home, we hide

In our own hearts, and count the wounds

Of passion and of pride.

 

And still, though Candlemas be spent

And Alleluias o’er,

Mary is music in our need,

And Jesus light in store.

 

May we draw on that great store of music and light as we journey through this year, especially in those moments of darkness when other lights give out.  And may we, like Simeon and Anna, be drawn continually to seek Christ in this temple, and praise God for all his blessings.  Amen.