This week's reflection comes from Rev'd Devin McLachlan, our Associate Vicar
Candlemas is just around the corner; we’ll be marking this Feast on Sunday, as well as on the day itself, 2 February. It’s the Feast of the Presentation, 40 days after Christmas, marking when (as told in Luke 2.22-40) Jesus’ parents came to the Temple, his mother Mary for her ritual purification, and a burnt offering to be given — and Christians have been celebrating this day since at least the 4th Century.
Back home in America, Candlemas was never a major holiday — but its related German folk tradition, Groundhog Day, is. For those who haven’t seen the 1993 Bill Murray movie, on the second of February, folks gather 'round to check whether the groundhog (back in Germany, a badger) sees its shadow. Sunny, shadow-casting weather on Candlemas foretells a long winter; overcast weather is a forecast for an early Springtime. The Scots thought along the same lines: “If Candlemas is fair and clear / There’ll be twa winters in th’ year.”
As someone trained in folklore as well as in theology, I’m delighted at the attitude of Groundhog Day — if it’s lousy weather now, then better days are coming soon. That’s a reminder we all might appreciate. (I suppose as well there is the corollary: But if it’s unseasonably bright now, then unseasonable darkness is in store. Then again, Northern European folklore has never been, shall we say, overflowing with one-sided optimism.)
The truth is, I don’t know what the rest of 2021 will look like, and I’m not one for prognostications (“It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” Jesus reminded his disciples on the day of his Ascension). We could be in for a long winter of discontent, or a glorious new springtime. We will certainly have both shadows and sunshine. But this is what I do know:
A poor, young family walked into the Temple in Jerusalem with their first born child, on their way from Bethlehem to Nazareth. And Anna, in her great age, saw that child began to praise God and to speak about him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem, and faithful Simeon held the child and declared to God "My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people."
That great light, that child of Good News, the salvation which God has prepared in the sight of every people — he shines in our hearts even now. Thanks be to God.
Die fighting me! I have the banner of Christ before me as true as St Constantine Total Christianity : Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. He said it to me not you for getting a grade A and a distinction from UCL for being his true friend and his kind of man and genius!
It was so sweet to me because they never rated me and I didn't know she was that bright when we first met. I thought it was just me not being confident. I didn't know it was because she was a genius that she wasn't responding and when I finally knew she was their best student I adored her for being that person. It wasn't snobbery it was that she was that person and it was revealed to me and it was as if God was saying I was that person as well for winning that first prize for writing her my first really good poem and reading it for the fourth year speech prize. I based my whole life…
I really feel that evangelical sense of inspiration like J.S. Bach or Mozart and they are lying about that being intelligence. They've always dismissed my divine inspiration from the subject of my attention that makes me win things as sex which it isn't. I just see what God sees in her. It's not idol worship either it's just his beauty in her. they are so snobby they won't recognise it as talent in England. I had a Lutheran influence from a very young age my German exchange partner's mother was a German countess from Dresden. The people in charge of my upbringing and vetting were so snobby they didn't care and it's got a life of its own now I'…
When I first fell in love at 15. I had a first sensation of divine inspiration that made me a Christian as it did give me recognition. I became a Christian and a prize winner because of that divine inspiration and a similar vision I had. I saw God in her because I was being so badly bullied and it was the inspiration of seeing her every day that made me face those bullies and try at school and made me spin on a sixpence and win my first of three prizes. I was so badly oppressed but won at first because God backed me for the top. I firmly believe that because Sarah was a candidate for this university.…
Candlemas is lovely, the bells and the sentiment is so beautiful; this vision of Simeon holding Jesus up with his last breath claiming he'd seen the Messiah. As an Anglican chorister for 12 years I can recite it and perform it straight of from memory and using any chant. i always preferred evensong to morning mass but Candelmas is lovely because it is Simeon's day. He's one of my favourite characters in the Bible. The first true person to believe in the power fo God in the flesh. I believe the opening movement of Bach's ascension oratorio to be a similar first vision of God and first true true inspiration from God. Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen. (Praise God in…