The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple on 2nd February brings us to the end of the forty day cycle of celebrations in our Church’s calendar dealing with the first principal pillar of our Faith, the Incarnation of God in Jesus. From Christmas shepherds, the birth in Bethlehem, the Holy Family, the first shedding of Christ’s blood in the Jewish rite of circumcision and the naming of Jesus, the manifestation of Christ to the wider, non-jewish world in the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus and his first miracle, all these events speak of the Mystery of the Infinite and Eternal God present in the baby, the child and the man Jesus. “Suddenly the Lord will come to his Temple” is a quotation applied to the Presentation. With a small thanksgiving sacrifice of pigeons, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple for the ceremony which marks the re-entry of Mary into the normal membership of the community after childbirth. The Christ-child is hailed and blessed by two representatives of the old order, Simeon and Anna who speak of Mary’s sufferings to come and the divine destiny of the Holy Child.
We are celebrating the Feast with extra style this year with the choir of King William’s College singing the Mass. We shall have the Blessing & Procession of Candles which gives the feast its popular name of Candlemas. This ancient custom recalls the words of Simeon who hails Jesus as “a light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of (God’s) people Israel”.
The service starts at 7p.m. Please come and bring a friend! The Mass setting will be Schubert in G and the anthem especially associated with the day, Eccard’s “When to the Temple”.
Very shortly after the Christmas cycle is completed we turn our attention towards the other pillar of Christian Faith, the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Christ.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 22nd February and gives us forty days of preparation for the great Feast of Easter. Originally Lent grew out of the preparation period of instruction before Easter for those who wished to be baptized at the Easter ceremonies. Some ancient writers have left their series of lectures for us, expositions of the scriptures and the articles of the Creed, rather like our modern-day Confirmation Classes. Somewhat later the forty days of our Lord’s Temptations in the Wilderness in preparation for his ministry were associated with this baptismal preparation and Lent became formalized as forty days before Easter (excluding the Sundays which are feasts rather than fasts).
Many people in our modern society have only a faint awareness of Lenten preparation. They may mark it in some trivial way which is put to shame by Muslims observing their Ramadan fast with rigour and seriousness.
Christian Lent traditionally puts before us three areas by which we can seek to grow and improve our spiritual life: Almsgiving, perhaps in a Lent box to U.S.P.G. or the Children’s Society or some other chosen charity. This should help us to be a little more generous with our money and grow in grace and consideration for others in need. Prayer, with a more serious and careful attention to regular prayer and attendance at Mass. We use the devotion of the Stations of the Cross at Saint Matthew’s as a symbolic walking with Jesus and meditating on the sadness of the way of sorrows. This makes us think of the Mystery of Suffering, not only of the Suffering of Jesus but also of all our human suffering in which God-with-us shares. So much pain seems inexplicable and outrageously unjust, somehow the Crucifixion of Christ is telling us that even in those dark valleys God has not forsaken us. Finally Fasting or self-denial as a Christian spiritual exercise has not been regarded seriously by quite a few generations of our Western, post-Christian society. Instant gratification is offered instead and sadly, in these more straitened economic times, the cost has to be reckoned up. Cuts and austerity seem extra hard if there has never been a discipline of self-restraint inculcated as a child grows to adulthood. “Behave yourself” was the cry of old-fashioned parenting in the hope that our own self-regulation would be sufficient to prevent others, such as the police and courts, having to make us behave decently by force. The message is only very imperfectly understood I’m afraid. It is not a welcome prospect but if we fail to behave ourselves then it is likely we shall be made to behave by heavy-handed law-enforcement. Following the recent riots in cities “across” such possibilities were discussed by politicians. Self-denial and the training of ourselves to do without in fairly unimportant things helps us to get things into perspective and sort out real priorities in our lives. Fasting usually means less food and drink and a more simple diet avoiding luxuries and indulgences but it might include a reduction of time spent playing video games or watching television. It can help us grow in self-control rather than being controlled by our habits. A voluntary acceptance of discipline helps us to detach ourselves a little from our own selfish wilfulness and, we might hope, liberate us to be a positive help and blessing to others rather than just a lazy consumer.
Why does the Church observe these cycles of celebrations? Year by year it is to hold before Christians and display to the world the Christian faith rooted in the life of Jesus. It reminds us regularly of the Mysteries of the Faith and helps us as we try to follow Christ to have an intelligent and informed understanding of what we believe and why. If we are aiming as our ideal at a Christ-like life then we need to have Jesus ever before us. “Sir, we would see Jesus” said some foreigners to the apostle. The formal celebrations of the Church’s year, day by day, week in, week out, help Christians to see Jesus and, we hope, learn to live with his life in us. The worldly world also asks to see Jesus in us in our behaviour and perhaps how we can give an account of our faith that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”. From cradle to grave, Bethlehem to Calvary, God is with us human beings and calls us to Christ-like holiness and the life of the Resurrection.