News

From the opening words of this service, ‘Dear friends, forty days ago we celebrated the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Soon the forty days of Lent begin.’

40 days and 40 days. Candlemas is a turning point when repentance and journeying are on the minds of the children of God. In seasonal terms it is a turning point too – wherever you live across the Globe this is what’s called a ‘cross quarter day’, midway between the winter and spring equinox.

40 days and 40 days.

At the great services of Christmas, we heard St John remind us that we are all given the choice to become ‘children of God, born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’ And in the 40 days since then, through the weekly Gospel, we have begun to inhabit that idea:  the child in the manger, visited by shepherds and attended by Magi, who lived under the sky and were guided by the heavens. The beloved son baptised by water and the holy spirit and called again by the voice of God. The son whose time had not yet come but was ready to transform the wedding feast by the riches of his grace. And last week, the son who stood up in his hometown and declared his mission to the most marginalised and forgotten people in society.

Week by week and day by day we have had the chance to reflect on what it means to be a precious child of God: affirmed by the voice of the living God, persuaded by Mary to live life right now, and strong in the spirit to stand up for the voiceless.

40 days and 40 days. In the Bible the number 40 represents both our humanity and God’s ability to change us.

Our humanity which is capable of glorious, wonderful things. To be children of God who encourage, uphold, build up, protect, and bring peace to one another. Each one of us has this ‘best self’ within us. God has called us by name and made us his own.

And yet, 40 years in the wilderness, 40 days of flood. The number 40 also reminds us of the worst side of humanity. The side which we quickly despair of when we look at the war in the middle east and Ukraine or call to mind the terrible events of the Holocaust.

What is often harder to do, as Christians, is to recognise both our own culpability and our own agency in these things. I am often asked how we should live in a world of chaos and pain as it quenches the light and hope in our own lives.

A prayer I used in the Cathedral’s ‘Vigil’ for the Middle East might help:

Saviour of the World, be present in all places of suffering, violence and pain, and bring hope even in the darkest night. Inspire us to continue your work of reconciliation today.’

‘Inspire us to continue your work of reconciliation today’. In other words, we should neither be consumed with anxiety nor anger. We do have agency. But the peace, justice and reconciliation we are seeking begins with the state of our own heart and relationships with one another.

Candlemas recalls the moment when two elderly members of the Temple congregation received the revelation they had prayed for every day of their lives: ‘my eyes have seen your salvation’ said Simeon. And Anna rejoiced and told everyone who would listen about the redemption which was coming their way.

But what does it look like to be saved and redeemed by this child Jesus? Every day we sing the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis in this Cathedral, and they are songs of revolution. In Mary’s Magnificat she tells us that the strong arm of God, which is there to comfort, protect and lift up the lowly, is also strong enough to bring down the mighty. And what a powerful moment it must have been for Mary to hear Simeon to echo this reversal, this pattern of bringing down and lifting up. What were his words again? ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many.’ Falling first. Repentance first.

It has been a devastating week in the Church of England. But the song of Candlemas is one which reminds us that the pattern of falling and rising is God’s pattern. 40 days and 40 days shows us how repentance is embedded into the story of our salvation. And repentance begins with the state of our own heart which we must search, for all signs of judgement and pride and insecurity. In God, we find our safe place: the place we can confess and begin again. As one 4^th century bishop wrote, ‘O Lord our God … steer the ship of our life to yourself, the quiet harbour of all storm-stressed souls and show us the course which we are to take.’

Soon, we will share the peace with one another in words which can heal our own hearts before we stand before the altar and receive the broken body of Jesus:

‘In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high has broken upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

Amen.