Reflection for the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple - 2nd February 2025
‘Candlemas’, the traditional name of the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the temple points to the light that is our focus today. It is a day for the blessing of candles and candle-lit processions. It’s the time when we begin to notice that it really is getting lighter in the mornings and evenings, spring is on the way even if the coldest weather is probably yet to come. Without the light of the sun there would be no life and the returning of that light is a cause for rejoicing.
Throughout the Christmas season we have been drawing on metaphors of light to describe the coming of Christ. John in the prologue to his gospel says ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people’. I’ve only just noticed that it’s the other way around from what I would expect – ‘the life was the light of all people’ rather than something like ‘the light was life to all people’. We also see this reflected later in John’s gospel where Jesus says ‘I am the light of the world’ [Jn 8:12], not ‘I bring light to the world’. Somehow it is the being, the life of Jesus that brings light not simply his words and deeds that illuminate us.
Today we celebrate the bringing of this new life, the baby Jesus, to the temple by his parents in obedience to the law. As with his circumcision, he is marked and redeemed as a son of the covenant people of Israel. But he is so much more than this – Simeon’s prayer recognises this baby brought to the temple in the arms of his mother as a ‘light to lighten the Gentiles’ as well as ‘glory to his people Israel’.
This image of Christ embraced in the arms of his mother draws me to the final verse of our Lauds hymn for Epiphanytide which has been much in my thoughts this year:
With joy we worship Christ our Lord;
May we embrace the life he brings,
Reflect the glory of his face,
Behold it for eternity.
What does it mean for us to embrace the life Christ brings? Can we hold the Christ child in our arms and reflect the glory of his face? Last year I spoke about David Ford’s explanation that the word usually translated as ‘shine’ in the Bible can also be translated as ‘smile’1. When we read of God’s face shining upon us we can also read that as God’s face smiling upon us. He had his new-born grandson in mind when he wrote that babies are born desiring connection with others and will attempt to mimic the smile of another from the earliest hours of their lives. The smile of a healthy baby is open and trusting, welcoming us in to relationship. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience of simple joy when responding to a smiling baby. In the same way, as God smiles upon us we are being called into relationship, to return that smile in trust and openness.
As we grow up the brokenness of human life, the fallibility of our parents and caregivers, distorts our original openness to life. We are all wounded one way or another and it can become very hard to trust in the goodness and love of God. Our original smile is lost and we have to defend ourselves from a world that does not value us simply for who we are. It can be very hard to smile.
Jesus felt no need to defend himself and I imagine his smile being open and welcoming, unlocking something in those open to receive it, disarming them and bringing healing and joy. His was a beaming face that brought light to the world simply through his presence, a light that was already visible in the face of the baby presented in the temple before he ever did anything.
Card designed and printed at Malling Abbey
On Advent Sunday we started our journey through these feasts of the incarnation with the card that said ‘You are THE PLACE where God speaks’, and that thought has popped up at various points in recent weeks. On Advent Sunday I heard it as a call for us to clear our inner space so that we could hear God speaking to us in our hearts. Today I see that it can also be read as ‘You are THE PLACE where God speaks’… to others. As we embrace the life embodied in the Christ child and let it be reflected in our faces we can become places where God speaks to those around us, we become those who bring light to the world by our simple presence. Surely that is at the core of our monastic vocation?
Mother Anne - 2nd February 2025
1Glorification and the Life of Faith by Ashley Cocksworth and David F. Ford, Baker Academic 2023, p 120