Unless you love online comments sections, there are few debates more tedious than the dating of Christmas.
Candlemas, or the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which we mark this week, depends on this arbitrary date. But as the darkness of winter begins to yield, it is a happy coincidence that the Church’s year now tells the story of the light to lighten the Gentiles.
Luke describes three people encountering the infant Jesus: Simeon, Anna, and Mary.
Simeon’s words are perhaps most famous, kept by the Anglican church every evensong in the Nunc Dimittis. This glory will come from Israel but enlighten the whole world, like the Magi’s star.
We learn less about Anna, but perhaps more speculatively, her tribe Asher is one of the 10 tribes lost after the Assyrian invasion some 700 years earlier. The scattered are brought home.
Mary fulfils the purification rites of the Law, and brings the requisite animals in offering to the temple. Of course Mary is only postponing the sacrifice of the Lamb, and as Simeon foretells, the sword will pierce her heart as the spear pierces His side. So we pivot at this feast from looking back to Christmas to looking ahead to Lent and Holy Week.
Darkness to light; lost to found; Christmas to Holy Week; Incarnation to Salvation: the Good News in miniature. Winter is waning: spring is coming.
Chris Braganza
