CANDLEMAS
The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
February 2, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Malachi 3:1-4 He will purify and refine
Psalm 84 Quam dilecta!
Hebrews 2:14-18 He did not come to help angels
Luke 2:22-40 Simeon and Anna
We are often told that we must be solicitous of the sensibilities of older folk with regard to anything new. The old imperial president, George Herbert Walker Bush, for instance, doesn't think much of pasta salad. Barbara says that he is apt to ask to have it heated up, as we always used to do when we called it spaghetti or macaroni. We should always be ready to use the Burial Office from the 1928 book for old people, if they want it. They prefer the antiquated English, the creaky cadences. It's hard to know what difference it would make, since they don't hear it anyway, or if they do will not raise objections that can be noticed. Old folks are supposed to be sticks-in-the-mud, and not too happy with change. I'm one of them, and hate Rock and Roll with a passion unbecoming to my antiquity. I hate it even now, when it has grown old and gray, and rocks more than it rolls. But I prefer the company of the young, even if they seem to like the noise.
Thomas Aquinas wrote that "youth is the cause of hope on these three accounts: namely because the object of hope is future, is difficult, and is possible. For the young live in the future and not in the past; they are not lost in memories but full of confidence. Secondly, their warmth of nature, high spirits and expansive heart embolden them to reach out to difficult projects: therefore are they mettle-some and of good hope. Thirdly, they have not been thwarted in their plans and their lack of experience encourages them to think that where there is a will there is a way. The last two factors, namely good spirits and a certain recklessness, are also at work in people who are drunk."
Surely Thomas had his fat tongue in his fat cheek in that last line. But his observation is on target: to the crusty and crotchety, to those with Old Timer's disease as we might call it, all that is young appears to be a reckless and reeling drunkenness, sticking out their tongues and mooning us at the same time. What a refreshing difference in the two old folks in today's gospel: the geezer Simon and the old crone Anna. The gospel for today is about them, more than it is about the "Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary" or the "Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple," or about Candle Mass, all titles given to this day. Protestants call it Ground Hog day. It's forty days after Christmas now, and the end of the Nativity cycle, just in time to shift gears for Lent, as it "lengthens" its days towards Easter. Candlemas succeeded the old pagan festival of carrying candles in honor of Ceres, the goddess of grain, or Mother Earth. Her statue stands atop the Board of Trade building in downtown Chicago, still presiding over the agriculturally based economy, she thinks, although its apprently shifted to computer chips. Candlemas was at one time a day of prayer for the coming season of planting, and the Church took it over and renamed it in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the middle ages. But it's not really abut fertility or even about the B.V.M. or the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, so much as it is about old Simeon and old Anna.
Luke tells us that these ancianos were hanging around the Temple (old people hang out in church a lot, cramming for their finals) when Jesus' parents brought him there for the required sacrifice. Luke makes it clear just how old they were--Simeon was ready for death, but it had been revealed to him that he wouldn't pass on until he had seen the Advent of Messiah, the coming of the Liberator. Joseph and Mary arrived with their working class contributions--a pair of pigeons could be substituted for the requisite lamb, by poor folks. It seems there was a kind of progressive taxation here, a wind tempered to the shorn lamb, and not the regressive tax on the poor by which the Empire sustains itself even today, with tax cuts for the sleek and fat. When Simeon saw them, he took the baby Jesus in his arms and blessed God. Luke tells us that the age old expecations of the people of Israel did in fact embrace and bless God for the Liberator, that they do in fact rejoice to see Revolution gurgling and giggling in its mother's arms. Simeon sings, "You can let me go now, Lord, I've seen it happen--the liberation you've sent for all people, the light of other nations, the glory of our own." The theme of light of course is what ultimately dimmed this feast to an occasion for blessing candles, instead of celebrating the liberation which lights up the gospel for everyone. Anna is said to be of a great age--84 years old--and spent all of her time doing Temple things, waiting for what it all signified in symbols. Waiting for fulfillment. And she arrives at the same time as Mary and Joseph, for their scheduled sacrifice, and she took it to be an occasion for her to start praching. She becomes the first woman preacher in the gospels, we might say, speaking of Jesus to all who were looking for the liberation of Jerusalem from the Romans. Anna saw the Roman hegemony coming to an end with this burning Babe of Candlemas. And it did, in the years ahead, and so indeed did the Temple and its liturgies, its bloody knives and fiery holocausts, when the Romans destroyed it all and God's people were scattered through the world. The Biblical faith metastasized and overthrew the Empire.
Luke's gospel today is the good news that old folks not only embrace and bless God for the wonderful new things God is doing in Jesus, but they are also the first preachers of the new and liberating revolution. You don't have to be young, or drunk, to love the future, to embrace the new, to see that everything is possible with God. At Candlemas, we geezers and crones can see the growing child of liberation and are invited to embrace this revolutionary infant and tell the world about him.
"Down with the rosemary, and so down with the bays and mistletoe. Down with the Holly, Ivy, all wherewith ye dressed the Christmas hall." So sang the poet Robert Herrick of this day, setting it aside for taking down the last greens of Christmas on this night. Use them for a bonfire of all the vanities, and to give light to the nations, and the glory of God's people Israel.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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