Candlemas

Candlemas
Malachi 3.1-5; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40

“And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Luke 2.35

I sometimes sit in church here after the 6pm mass, when the lights are out and the west doors locked, but the votive candles are still alight at all the shrines around the church.

There is quietness and the strange beauty which flickering candlelight brings to a house of prayer; the lingering smell of incense, the aroma of God; dark, cavernous shadows and pools of golden light.

Life only holds its interest because of the shadows, because it is bittersweet: from the pain of childbirth to the joy that baby brings; to the pain of passing through death and the joy of the mystery of heaven.

At a more mundane level, as I sat in the pub with four old school friends after Christmas, they all looked the worse for wear – not those bright eyed boys from the 1960s – with myself as an obvious exception; but then, what stories they had to tell! The bitter-sweetness of having a life.

But of course we always dream and long for sweetness without bitterness, knowing that even if it were possible, it would be dull existence.

Our Lady Mary’s life was certainly bittersweet. All the confusion and shame of the conception, the agony of labour, the long uncomfortable journey, the indignity of the stable - all is past.

It’s six weeks after Christmas, and now she brings her pride and joy, her baby boy, to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem: the first fruit of her womb to be dedicated to God.

Both she and the baby God are ritually unclean through childbirth. They must offer the two pigeons as a sin offering and a redemption price, for the firstborn belongs to the Lord and must be redeemed.

Mary and Jesus represent the two aspects of this Feast we keep today, as the 1662 Prayer Book entitles it: “The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, commonly called, The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin.”

It was primarily a Feast of Our Lord, rather than of his Mother, as the ancient collect I sang earlier, taken from the 7thC Gregorian Sacramentary, makes plain.

And the blessing of candles? Well this was probably another example of that early Christian cross-cultural trick. Take a pagan festival, to do with flames and torches, and chasing away the darkness of winter, and baptize it; Christianize it!

So because Christ is the Light to lighten the gentiles, we bless all the candles we will use in the coming liturgical year.

And like our pagan ancestors, we process with our torches and candles, putting to flight the steel grey skies of winter and hoping for signs of spring.

Of course our American cousins are busy doing the cross-cultural trick backwards.

So Candlemas, a Christian feast, becomes the secular celebration of Groundhog Day, based on an old Scottish couplet:

"If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
there'll be twa winters in the year."

A sunny Candlemas means the severity of winter will continue – the groundhog will return to its sleep. But if it is dull and overcast, the worst of winter is past.

Candlemas is also a pivotal day in the Christian calendar. It is bittersweet, as we look back on the joy of Christmas and Epiphany, as Simeon and Anna rejoice in the Temple; and yet we look forward towards Lent and Passiontide: the agonies of our Lord’s pierced Body; the anguish of our Lady’s pierced soul.

In some of the older rites, where the blessing of candles took place after mass, the white and gold vestments of the mass were exchanged for penitential purple for the procession of lights.

Candlemas reminds us of Life as we Know It, dappled and pied with pain. Who has not watched children grow into adults and not known the bittersweetness of parenthood?

Who has not loved deeply and not known the bittersweet wounds of affection?

The joyful comfort of lovers, friends and family is always eventually plundered by death and grief.

And with all our conviviality and social pleasures, who has not sat down sometime and felt so alone and lonely.

We should be optimistic about ourselves and about our world, while knowing that we are constantly nagged by intimations of despair.

As Hazlitt put it: “Man is the only species who can laugh or cry because he is the only being who knows the difference between what is and what should be.”

We can long for peace and yet stand looking year after year at war and violence.

We can reach for the stars and in minutes be only too aware of our human mortality and of the contingency of all things.

But, the Light shines in the darkness: that spark of hope that God implants within all of us.

We were hardly aware of it in the full blaze of day, in the sweetness of life, but in the gloom we can see the beckoning light of Christ. Or to use CS Lewis’s metaphor, ‘God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.’

As Christians we believe that the Light is Christ. The bright radiance of candles around the altar draws us to him, the source of all light, our comfort and joy.

At the altar we see the bittersweet man of sorrows who has been through what we go through, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us in today’s epistle: like us; tested like us. Here at the altar he is crucified and yet exalted; the Lamb that was slain who yet lives.

And we live this strange but alluring bittersweet life in the light of glory, and in the presence of Christ.

John Donne lived his life to the full, and knew pain and pleasure, shame and holy exultation. His vision of heaven was of a state of being where these two sides of human life and human nature would be miraculously transformed into the equanimity of Christ our Lord; perfect composure.

So he prayed:

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy glory and dominion...

And with this confidence in the Gospel, as we celebrate this Candlemas, we shall not fear, even if

“A sword will pierce through (our) own soul too.” Luke 2.35

St Elizabeth of Hungary

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Phil 2.4

St Elizabeth of Hungary, 19th November 2010 (Preached in the Cathedral at Evensong)

Think back to when you were 24 years old – much easier to do for some of you than others of us.

What had you done with your life by 24?

I had sat a lot of examinations at school and at university. I had played a lot of rugby and cricket; done a lot of singing; spent a year teaching mathematics to boys at Lancing College; had a few iffy relationships; fallen off my motorbike too many times; generally messed around!

I’d had quite a good time really for the first 24 years of my life. I hope you did.

Today we remember in the Church calendar, St Elizabeth of Hungary, Princess of Thuringia. She was dead by 24. She died on November 17th in the year 1231.

So what did she achieve in those 24 years that made her a saint of the Church?

You don’t have to be an historian to know that Central Europe was a very different place 800 years ago.

Elizabeth was born to King Andrew II of Hungary and his wife Gertrude in 1207 and by the age of four was engaged to be married to the heir to the throne of Thuringia, Prince Hermann. At that tender age, she was taken to be raised in the court of Thuringia (central Germany).

When Elizabeth was six, her mother was murdered by jealous Hungarian nobles.

When she was nine, her fiancé, Hermann died; and when she was ten, Hermann’s father the king, went mad and died. By 14 she was married to Herman’s brother, now the 21 year old King Ludwig IV.

At 15, she had the first of her three children, and by 20, her husband had died of the plague on his way to a Crusade, and her 5 year old son became King Hermann II.

Almost immediately she was driven out of her home in the Castle of Marburg, and her three children were taken away from her.

What a life! Not much cricket and singing and messing about.

It’s hardly surprising then, that she was a very devout Christian from an early age, and in the last few years of her life became a Third order Franciscan.

There are many stories of her dedication to the poor and the infirm. She gave away much of her money and possessions and nursed the sick in her own hospitals.

Her life of self-giving, rather than what could easily have been a life of self-pity, proved an inspiration for generations and many hospitals, schools and churches have been dedicated to her name.

As recently as 2007, the 800th anniversary of her birth, the German 10 Euro coin was engraved with her image and she even had a musical which ran from 2007 to 2009 – not exactly Abba, but ‘Elizabeth – the Legend of a Saint’.

She made the most of her twenty four years, finding meaning in her tragic life by living for God and for others.

Whatever our life holds for us, let’s ask God to help us never to let self-pity drag us down; or self-congratulation puff us up; but to follow Elizabeth and Jesus in the joyful service of others.

As our patron St Paul puts it: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Phil 2.4

Wrestling with God

Wrestling with God

Baptism of Rex William Snow Armstrong

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32.26

I thought I could do no better today than to start with those opening lines of that wonderful Alan Bennett sermon from Beyond the Fringe. It let’s me get the rugby done with and an introduction to Jacob and Esau all in one go. (I’ll try and use his mocking, parsonic voice.)

First verse of the fourteenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings: 'And he said, "But my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man."' Perhaps I might say the same thing in a different way by quoting you the words of that grand old English poet, W.E. Henley, who said:

When that One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name;
It matters not who won or lost,
But how you played the game.

This is a wonderful and mysterious story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. His name, Jacob, means ‘hold the heel’ and came to mean twister, or cheat. (Although in those name-your-baby books, they generously say it means Conqueror.)

He followed his twin brother, Esau, out of the womb, grasping his heel, and eventually cheated him out of his birthright as the firstborn.

Jacob’s parents, Isaac and Rebekah, and his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, represented two generations of dysfunctional family life. Hollyoaks and Eastenders are tame in comparison.

Now 20 years after the grand swindle, Jacob’s returning to face his brother Esau. He’s become very wealthy by more cheating and lying and at the expense of his cheating and lying uncle, Laban.

Life with his two cheating and lying wives is not surprisingly complicated. Rachel stole the household gods when they ran away from uncle Laban’s boys; hid them in the saddle bags of her camel, sat on them and said she couldn’t get up to be searched because it was the wrong time of the month. (Gen 31.33ff.)

But now Jacob is afraid as he hears that his brother Esau is heading towards him with 400 armed men. It’s not looking like a kiss and make up party.

Jacob is a bad man; but strangely devoted to God. So he calls out to God, remembering the vision he had 20 years before at Bethel, when God showed him a glimpse of heaven and promised him the earth:

Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mothers with their children. And thou saidst, I will surely prosper thee, and make thy descendents as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. (vv 11,12)

He waits for an answer to his prayer, for another vision, for a voice from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And there is nothing.

So he uses his brains, charm and cunning. He sends plenty of bribes on ahead of him, and eventually, the women and children.

Finally he is on his own in the night, by the ford over the river Jabbok. He’s probably contemplating doing a runner at this point, but he knows he’d miss the money, the servants and the women.

And then, there is the Curious Incident of the Man in the Night-Time. It reads as if it’s the most natural thing in the world: “So Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.” (v.25)

They are evenly matched and it’s looking like a draw, when the stranger cheats, and hits him below the belt. (Probably the meaning of this rather strange business about the hip or the thigh.)

Lets now go to the Tate Britain and take up the story. For there is the magnificent alabaster sculpture by Sir Jacob Epstein, Jacob and the Angel, created in the middle of the Second World War.

The two great seven foot, endomorphic, naked men, who look as if they have walked out of a Beryl Cook painting, are in an ambiguous embrace. We can clearly see that the Angel is holding Jacob up, and yet Jacob might suppose that he is clinging to the Angel.

The man wants to be off before the dawn reveals his identity. But Jacob is persistent. Like the woman with the unjust judge in today’s Gospel parable, he will not let God go until he blesses him. For by now he is realising that this wrestling match is the continuation of his apparently unanswered prayer to God.

Jacob is a cheat and a twister and now God has won by fighting foul. He has always wanted to bless Jacob, but Jacob would not let him. He would not become naked and vulnerable. He wanted to stay proud and independent.

The embrace of struggle is the embrace of love. It is a life-changing encounter that leaves Jacob both wounded and blessed.

And to remind him forever after of this, he is given a new name, Israel: Yisra’el, the one who sarahs — the one who strives — with El — with God himself.

Christianity has never been easy-believism. An encounter with the living God, now as then, leaves us both wounded and blessed.

Jesus makes this crystal clear in his teaching. We are to take up our cross and follow him.

For young Rex we hope a long, happy and contented life. But we know that that, however much we try to protect him, there will be the childhood scrapes and bruises.

And as he grows into a man, he will also gather emotional and spiritual bruises, which as he learns to handle them, will add to the richness of his life.

Our ability to grow mature emotionally and spiritually is determined by the degree of woundedness in our lives. And more than that; the degree to which we have processed and wrestled with those wounds.

Here at this Table we come to celebrate the wounds of the one who loves us and who was wounded for us.

I hope you read stories to Rex. And that sometime you might read him Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, The Selfish Giant. The Giant too has been searching for God, and like Jacob asks: ‘Who are you?’

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?"

For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."

"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."

"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32.26

Faith, Trinity 18

Faith

“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” Mk 9. 24
Trinity 18 (Harvest): Habbakuk 1.1-4; 2.1-4; Ps 37.1-9; 2 Tim 1.1-14

So the man comes home from church one evening having just heard a stirring sermon on ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.’

There is a large sycamore tree right outside his window that obscures a beautiful view of the sea. Before he goes to bed he looks at the tree and says: ‘Lord, I really have faith that you can remove this tree and throw it in the sea.’ He pulls the curtains and goes to bed.

First thing in the morning he leaps up and pulls back the curtains. He looks at the sycamore tree and says: ‘I knew it would still be there!’

At first sight this saying of Jesus might seem to suggest that if we only had a tiny amount of real, genuine faith, then we could move mountains or replant trees in the sea.

This is obviously the sort of thing that the disciples have in mind when they ask him to increase their faith.

You can almost imagine Peter saying to the Lord after this statement about tree replanting, ‘Really Lord!?’

And the Lord saying unto Peter: ‘Don’t be so daft!’ – or words to that effect.

Jesus is pulling their leg. He’s teasing them. He’s using humour and hyperbole again to show them how they’ve got it all wrong.

We still often talk about faith as if you can have it in varying amounts. ‘He has tremendous faith’ can either mean he’s very devout, or, rather naïve, or even, particularly stupid.

Like the schoolboy definition of faith: faith is believing something you know isn’t true.

It is not the quantity of faith that is important. It is the nature of the faith, and what you have faith ‘in’, that is paramount.

By the ‘nature of faith’, I mean that it must be a belief that affects your actions? I believe that wasting energy is bad for the environment, so instead of driving to the shops, I walk.

But belief that affects actions is not enough. Young children who believe in Santa Claus can behave in significantly different ways for at least a few days before Christmas. But there is no Santa Claus.

More tragically, suicide bombers sincerely believe they will go straight to heaven. It is a defiant act of faith.

No, it is not just the nature, or sincerity, or depth of our faith that is critical. It is also what we have faith ‘in’ that is crucial.

My uncle had great faith in number 7 running in the 2.30 at Doncaster; and in many other horses throughout his long life. It was nearly always misplaced faith.

I must have told you about the strict Baptist minister visiting Newmarket. Out of curiosity he goes to the races, and knowing that nobody knows him there, decides to have a flutter. He goes to the paddock first and is intrigued to see a Catholic priest praying in Latin over a horse. He is even more surprised when it wins. The priest prays over two or three more horses and they all win.

So finally he lays half the church funds on the horse the priest next prays over. The horse starts well but then keels over before the first fence and dies. The minister is distraught and rushes to ask the priest what happened. “Ah that’s the trouble with you Baptists,” the priest replies, “you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”

So before faith leads to actions, we need to be assured that the content of our faith is sound and will not lead to foolish actions.

This is why Christian theology, which down through the centuries has tried to wrestle with what the Bible teaches us, is so important. In Anselm’s phrase, it is faith seeking understanding. Othodoxy leads to orthopraxis. Right belief leads to right actions.

Many of the struggles of the Anglican communion at the moment are centred on this very thing.

As we use Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition & Reason, we come up with different answers to the question: how should I act in response to my faith?

We have a guide in conscience, and in the peace of Christ, which is supposed to rule in our hearts and minds. But Scripture warns us that the human conscience can be seared, and that selfish desire can lull our heart into a false sense of peace.

This is why Christianity is essentially a communal faith. We need each other to save us from ourselves, as we try to act out our faith.

So the lives of the saints, and of our brothers and sisters around us and around the world, help to form the content of our faith and encourage us to act on that faith, to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’

Occasionally there will be some incident in our life or in the lives of those close to us, which acts as a fillip to our faith. It gives us a sense that God really is there and that our relationship with him is not just wishful thinking. It is never ‘proof’, but it is an encouragement to go on believing.

When I was young, I ran a youth club on a barge on the river Adur in Shoreham. A number of the teenagers became Christians and exhibited that naivety of faith which can often be such an inspiration to us old cynics who’ve seen it all and are more prone to put things down to co-incidence than prayer!

We outgrew the one barge and needed another one. They prayed and we found another barge, floated it and claimed it. We needed timber, pitch pine to be specific. They prayed and the old Palace Pier in Brighton was being scrapped and they gave us all the timber we needed.

And most strangely, we needed coach screws – huge screws for fixing the timbers together. Their faith was all stoked up and they prayed for coach screws. As we went on a Sunday afternoon walk up the riverbank, through the south downs valley, incredibly, we found coach screws in the grass along a hundred yard stretch, far more than we needed.

God had not rained them down like manna from heaven. That would have been a bit irresponsible of the Almighty. They had been thrown there a decade before, by the railwaymen taking up the old Horsham line which was axed in the Beeching cuts, that many of you will remember. Whether co-incidence or not, certainly it was an encouragement to faith.

But what if acting on our faith does not lead to greater blessing, but seems to add to the difficulties of our life. Or what if, however much we believe and pray, the horrors and messiness of life do not go away?

If today’s readings have any common thread, it is, how do you keep faith, when all around you wickedness and chaos seem to go unchecked, and the task ahead of you as a disciple of Jesus Christ seems impossible and unrealistic?

So Habakkuk complains to the Lord: “Why do you tolerate wrong? …The law is paralyzed and justice never prevails!” (1.3f) The Psalm (37) takes up a similar theme.

In the reading from Luke, the disciples begin to grasp the enormity of the Gospel project and ask simply: “Lord increase our faith.” (Lk 17.5)

At the end of Habakkuk’s short prophecy, he sums up the Christian position:

“Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (Hab 3.17f)

It was refreshing to hear on the radio this harvest Sunday morning, a farmer whose crops had been decimated by floods, expressing just this same thought.

Acting in faith is a statement that we do believe that God is good; that right will triumph over evil; that saving the world is a project worth giving our life to.

In Stanford’s anthem (at the offertory - see below) based on Habakkuk’s prophecy, you will hear how he turns the gloom into an assertion of faith as we come to the Altar of God.

For every time we come to this Table and taste the food of heaven, we are offering a Eucharist, a thanksgiving for God’s sustaining harvest in our lives.

And we bring our mustard seed of faith, seeking to understand what God is doing in our lives and in our world.

It is not always easy to believe and to shape our actions to our belief, but whenever we come in penitence and faith to the bread and the wine, we can say with honesty:

“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” Mk 9. 24

Offertory Anthem

"For lo I raise up"

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

For lo I raise up that bitter and hasty nation,
Which march thro' the breadth of the earth,
To possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful,
Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.
Their horses also are swifter than leopards,
And are more fierce than the evening wolves.
And their horsemen spread themselves,
Yea, their horsemen come from far.
They fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour,
They come all of them for violence;
Their faces are set as the east-wind,
And they gather captives as the sand.
Yea, he scoffeth at kings,
And princes are a derision unto him.
For he heapeth up dust and taketh it.
Then shall he sweep by as a wind that shall pass over,
And be guilty,
Even he, whose might is his God.
Art not Thou from everlasting,
O Lord, my God, mine Holy One?
We shall not die.
O Lord, thou hast ordained him for judgment,
And thou, O Rock hast established him for correction.
I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower,
And look forth to see what he will say to me,
And what I shall answer concerning my complaint.
And the Lord answered me and said:
The vision is yet for the appointed time,
And it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie,
Tho' it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come.
For the earth shall be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
As the waters cover the sea.
But the Lord is in his holy temple:
Let all the earth keep silence before Him.

Habakkuk 1.6-12; 2.1, 3. 14, 20

Candlemas 2007

Malachi 3.1-5; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40

“A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” Luke 2.35

I sometimes used to sit in church after the last 7pm Sunday mass at St Mary’s, when the lights were out , the doors locked, but the votive candles were still alight at all the shrines around the church.

There is quietness and the strange beauty which flickering candlelight brings to a house of prayer; the lingering smell of incense, the aroma of God; dark, cavernous shadows and pools of golden light.

It is a beauty that is concealed in the shadowless brightness of the halogen bulb; the full glare of day.

I’m with Gerard Manley Hopkins:

“Glory be to God for dappled things—
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.”

Life only holds its interest because of the shadows, because it is bittersweet: from the pain of bringing a child into the world who then brings such joy; to the pain of passing through death and into eternal felicity.

And yet as humans we cannot but long for sweetness without bitterness, knowing that even if it were possible it would be dull.

Mary’s life was certainly bittersweet. All the confusion and shame of the conception, the agony of labour, the long uncomfortable journey, the indignity of the stable - all is past.

Now she brings her pride and joy, this six week old baby boy, to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem: the first fruit of her womb to be dedicated to God.

Both she and the baby God are ritually unclean through childbirth. They must offer the two pigeons as a sin offering and a redemption price, for the firstborn belongs to the Lord and must be redeemed.

These are the dual aspects of this Feast, as Bishop Cosin acknowledges in the 1662 Prayer Book which he entitles: “The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, commonly called, The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin.”

It was primarily a Feast of Our Lord, rather than of his Mother, as the ancient collect I sang earlier, taken from the 7thC Gregorian Sacramentary, makes plain.

And the blessing of candles? Well this was probably another example of the early Christian cross-cultural trick. Take a pagan festival, to do with flames and torches, and chasing away the darkness of winter, and baptize it; Christianize it!

So because Christ is the Light to lighten the gentiles, we bless all the candles we will use in the coming liturgical year.

And like our pagan ancestors, we process with our torches and candles, putting to flight the steel grey skies of winter, and never mentioning the pagan feast of Imbolc & Oimelc which we have displaced.

While we are at it, let’s make St Blaise (February 3rd) the patron saint of Ear, Nose and Throat, and bless parishioners’ throats with the newly blessed candles to protect them from all the colds and 'flus so prevalent at this time of the year.

Of course our American cousins are busy doing the cross-cultural trick backwards. So Candlemas, a Christian feast, becomes the much more politically correct, Groundhog Day, based on an old Scottish couplet:

"If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
there'll be twa winters in the year."

A sunny Candlemas means the severity of winter will continue – the groundhog will return to its sleep. But if it is dull and overcast, the worst of winter is past.

Candlemas is also a pivotal day in the Christian calendar. It is bittersweet, as we look back on the joy of Christmas and Epiphany, as Simeon and Anna rejoice in the Temple; and yet we look forward towards Lent and Passiontide: the agonies of our Lord’s pierced Body; the anguish of our Lady’s pierced soul.

In some of the older rites, where the blessing of candles took place after mass, the white and gold vestments of the mass were exchanged for penitential purple for the procession of lights.

Candlemas reminds us of Life as we Know It, dappled and pied with pain. Who has not watched children grow into adults and not known the bittersweetness of parenthood?

Who has not loved deeply and not known the bittersweet wounds of affection?

The joyful comfort of lovers, friends and family is always eventually plundered by death and grief.

And with all our conviviality and social pleasures, who has not sat down and felt so alone, and, but precariously, loved?

We should be optimistic about ourselves and about our world, while knowing that we are constantly nagged by intimations of despair.

As Hazlitt put it: “Man is the only species who can laugh or cry because he is the only being who knows the difference between what is and what should be.”

We can long for peace and yet stand looking year after year at war and violence.

We can reach for the stars and in minutes be only too aware of our human mortality and of the contingency of all things.

But, the Light shines in the darkness: that spark of hope which God implants within all of us.

We were hardly aware of it in the full blaze of day, in the sweetness of life, but in the gloom and we can see the beckoning light of Christ. Or to use CS Lewis’s metaphor, ‘God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.’

As Christians we believe that the Light is Christ. The bright radiance of candles around the altar draw us to him, the source of all light, our comfort and joy.

At the altar we see the bittersweet man of sorrows who has been through what we go through, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us in today’s epistle: like us; tested like us. Here at the altar he is crucified and yet exalted; the Lamb that was slain who yet lives.

And we live this strange but alluring bittersweet life in the light of glory, and in the presence of Christ.

John Donne lived his life to the full, and knew pain and pleasure, shame and holy exultation. His vision of heaven was of a state of being where these two sides of human life and human nature would be miraculously transformed into the equanimity of Christ our Lord; perfect composure.

So he prayed:

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy glory and dominion...

And with this confidence in the Gospel, as we celebrate this Candlemas, we shall not fear, even if

“A sword shall pierce through (our) own soul also.” Luke 2.35