We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened. Jesus came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.
His parents made an offering on his behalf and they heard Simeon's prophecy of their Son becoming 'a light to lighten the nations'.
Candlemas gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect about what we do when we come to this Temple Sunday by Sunday. It is a Temple before it is a preaching house, a place of teaching, yes, but primarily not a place of edification but a place of worship.
In this Church the worship of the eucharist has been offered day by day with a few breaks since 1863. People in their thousands have joined here to offer the unbloody sacrifice initiated by Jesus Christ we call the eucharist. They've come 'to offer themselves, their souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with, in and through Jesus Christ.
The West Window, subject of our appeal, has two smaller windows at the bottom designed to emphasise the eucharist in this context. One has the sacrifice of the Cross. The other has the priest at the altar pleading the same sacrifice on our behalf with the text ‘ye do show the Lord's death until he comes’. Praying as we do ‘that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father almighty’. Our response, especially true to this Feast, is ‘may the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands to the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his holy church’.
Today on Candlemas, Feast of his Presentation, on his first visit to the one earthly Temple of his day, Our Lord anticipated his eternal sacrifice. The turtle doves sacrificed on his behalf in that Temple gave way, with all animal sacrifices, to his once for all offering made on a repeat visit to Jerusalem in his 33rd year. They took then no doves but an innocent Lamb, and as they did so the prophecy about his mother Mary in today's Gospel was fulfilled. 'A sword will pierce your heart'. In St Martin’s Brighton, a Church I know well, that very image of Our Lady is provided at the foot of the Cross, graphically in black and with a sword stuck into her heart.
There is deep continuity between the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians. They all hang together. In a culture full of self-interest what we are about this morning is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. Sacrifice is at heart about voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death. It is about joyous living just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires.
In this context it is an excellent practice, helping prepare for the eucharist, to start each day with what’s called the Morning Offering. The idea is to sit on your bed as soon as you get up and, whilst letting the blood reach your head, get into gear spiritually by praying something like, ‘Lord, I thank you for who you are and your love for me and all that is. I give myself to you. Take me and use me for your praise and service and the building up of the body of Christ. Come, Holy Spirit'. When you have made such a prayer at the start of the day you recognise spiritual needs and opportunities around you and the hand of God working in your life in the hours that follow. I know this from when I forget to pray it - my day turns rather useless! The Morning Offering is linked to Christ’s Offering and invitation to join in it at Mass where we pray, ‘May he make of us an eternal offering to you’.
We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.
Part of that enlightenment, as Mary and Joseph found, is the bringing of understanding and hence more creative involvement with the dark times of our life.
We all live with these - bereavement, chronic illness or the necessity to live with unresolved situations where there may be conflict. With Mary and Joseph this morning we welcome holy Simeon's words with gratitude since they speak of peace coming, as it does again and again, through heavenly illumination.
Jesus Christ is the light who lightens all nations and all ages.
May his light shine on us and into our various life situations this morning as we come to worship 'offering ourselves, our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with in and through Jesus Christ.
Like Simeon we see in Jesus one who removes the fear of death and promises perpetual light to his family as they travel forward in his light to their fulfilment in the house of the Lord together and forever.
We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened. Our Lord came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.
I end with a beautiful prayer of John Donne, sixteenth century Dean of St Paul’s which captures that aspiration:
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.
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