Today is two feasts in one: the Presentation in the Temple,
and Candlemas. The Presentation in the Temple is based on the Jewish law that
required every firstborn to be given to God. The child was brought to the
Temple as a gift, but could then be bought (or perhaps rented?) back by way of
a sacrifice. And so Yosef and Miryam, forty days after the birth of Yehoshua,
bring him to the Temple to be given to God. There they meet Shimon, a devout
man who spent his old age awaiting the Consolation of Israel, i.e the Moshiach;
he recognises this in the child and utters his famous “Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace”, and then gives a rather unnerving prophecy as to
the kind of “consolation” this Messiah is likely to bring. They are then joined
by the 84-year-old Chanah, a widow prophet, who also recognises the child and
proclaims him to the assembled people.
The point, of course, is that here for the first time the
newborn child is revealed, and revealed not only as who he is but as what he
is, in the physical context of the Temple and in the human context of the
devout. He is the Anointed One, the Saviour, the Moshiach, the Christos. He is
what Israel has been waiting for. So the Presentation as a Church occasion is
one of enlightenment: the Umwelt, the
world around, is for the first time enlightened as to the coming of the Messiah, and as to the
identity of this child.
As such, it is a festival confirming the
increasing/returning light, and so it is fitting that here should take place
the blessing of the candles to be used in the services for the whole remainder
of the church year: “Candlemas”.
In France, moreover, Candlemas, or more often Candlemas Eve,
is Pancake Night, when pancakes (larger and thinner than the Anglo-American
kind) are baked and flipped in the pan, and if the flipped pancake is
properly caught in the frying-pan you will have good luck in the coming
year.
Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, "The Presentation in the Temple" (detail)
