Candlemas, the Presentation, the Purification. There are three significantly different names for this feast in the Latin Church. The main events, given in our Gospel reading, center on our Lord’s entrance into the Temple as a child—his presentation as the firstborn son, as well as Our Lady’s ritual purification after childbirth. As a result, the feast has traditionally emphasized two further theological notes behind these two events: first, the integrity of our human nature or substance in the Son of God, which comes up in our reading from Hebrews, and second, the preservation of Mary’s virginity even after childbirth.
To these four mysteries, we then add two more. Some Eastern Christians call this day the Meeting in the Temple—first with Simeon and then with Anna. Our tally now comes to six mysteries. Next, from Simeon we get a prophecy about Jesus’ passion and Mary’s sorrow. Eight. Lastly, in Simeon’s exuberant song, the Nunc dimittis, we find a ninth aspect—light. Christ is the light of the world, and so we bless and light candles.
If I were preaching in a different century, I might make a big deal about the numerical symbolism in that list of nine mysteries. For now, though, it’s probably best just to acknowledge and wonder at all these layers. One of the old antiphons appointed for the procession appears to touch on almost all of them, adding to them that familiar nuptial language that seems to show up everywhere in Scripture and Tradition: “O Sion, adorn thy bridechamber, and receive Christ thy King: greet Mary who is the gate of heaven: for she beareth the King of the glory of the new light: she remaineth a virgin, yet beareth in her arms a Son begotten before the morning star: whom Simeon took in his arms declaring to all nations that he is Lord of life and death, and Savior of the world” (Adorna thalamum).
With that beautifully prolix antiphon in mind, perhaps it’s helpful to think of this feast through the lens of one of my favorite concepts: the liturgical stammer. This is not an official dogmatic concept (maybe it goes without saying), but some scholars have used it to think about the ways that the liturgy seems to repeatedly stumble over itself in the struggle of saying what needs to be said.
The liturgical stammer is more obvious in some places than others. If you’ve ever been to a Byzantine liturgy, you’ll notice the repetition, almost bewilderingly excessive to many modern Western ears, of “Lord have mercy” and other key phrases. But the traditional Roman liturgy does this as well, and not just with the Kyrie. Sometimes it is as subtle as the priest’s constant turning back and forth between congregation and altar; the need to repeat “The Lord be with you” at several different moments; the repetition of orations when in theory one would suffice; the multiple opportunities to kiss the altar; the seeming indecision, in the Roman canon itself, about whether or not we even have any right to be doing what we’re doing, whether we really dare to approach the altar of God. Often it feels like two steps forward and one step back.
Much, much more can be said about that, but here I mainly want to show the kind of stammer that we see in today’s feast. What is the feast about? Well, it’s about the Presentation—no, the purification—no, the Incarnation—no, the virginity of Mary—no, the meeting with Simeon—and so on and so forth. It is about each of these things and all of them, and part of the meaning of this kind of restless movement from one to the other is the fact that we can never, in this world, finally get it in any decisive and permanent way.
We see the stammer, again, in that great text from today’s Gospel, the canticle of Simeon, the Nunc dimittis:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word;
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation
which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to thy people Israel.
Perhaps it’s overdramatic to call such eloquent words stammering. There is after all a great biblical tradition of repetition and parallel structures. What we get here are three things all together:
- First, the Lord’s salvation.
- Second, the light for the Gentiles.
- Third, the glory of Israel.
What Simeon implies is not that these are three separate things, but that these three things are, precisely, the thing that his eyes have seen. He repeats it three times, using three different concepts: salvation, light, glory.
First there is a very this-worldly hope—the salvation of a people long oppressed. Then there is another hope, still of this world, but somewhat higher: a light that enlightens. Here, with this notion of enlightenment, we’ve entered a more intellectual level. Light, even the smallest candle on a dark path, is knowledge. But, it seems, the story gets even better, because with salvation and knowledge also comes glory. The glory of thy people Israel.
And what, we might ask, is glory? We use the word constantly in our worship. Glory be to God on high. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Glory be to thee, O Lord.
Glory in the New Testament can mean a variety of things: praise, fame, honor, dignity, splendor.
Maybe, though, this doesn’t really help us at all, because it brings us to one more layer of conceptual language. “Glory” is not normally something you can sink your teeth into or grasp in your hands. But here, in Simeon’s song, is something different: he holds in his hands “the glory of Israel.”
The key to Simeon’s three things—salvation, light, glory—is not another concept, or another word, or another secret definition. The key is a baby, barely more than a month born.
Babies are, in so many ways, signs that exceed their meaning. Despite all that we do in this age to control the making of babies, to make childbearing and childrearing one more consumer choice alongside buying furniture or using natural gas, babies always come to us as strangers.
It’s fitting, then, that this baby stands for a meaning that is not subject to our control or manipulation. We can try to manipulate him, try to control what he stands for, but at the end of the day what he stands for is himself. He is not a symbol of something else. With Jesus, it is no longer proper to speak of salvation, or the light of the world, or the glory of Israel, apart from this person who is the new Israel, the new salvation, the new light.
If we find this feast disorienting, we do well to look, with Simeon, to the Lord. We do not have to choose between Jesus and Mary, between Israel and the nations, between heaven and earth. Christ himself is our peace, as St. Paul writes, “who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14). We cannot really describe this peace, in worldly terms, in the language of human violence. We can only stammer on about Jesus.
It is a bold stammer, like Simeon and like Anna. But there is no further explanation, no deeper key, than Jesus himself. We can try to offer the world other things: a Jesus who is pure enlightenment, a Jesus who is political liberation, a Jesus who is simple Jewish prophet. Yet what Simeon sees is none of these things and all of them: a person who in himself is the fulfillment and the end of all things.
Our call as Catholics is to stammer and stutter our way to glory. This will look strange, because peace looks strange. We are too used to our divisions. The world cannot understand, for example, how the Church can speak on both hospitality and judgment, on unconditional love and the reality of sin. The world cannot understand how Christians can care for the good of all while proclaiming the end of all things. The world cannot understand how a virgin could be the Mother of God, how God could be man, and how death could become life.
That is what Simeon says, in the end: that death has become life, that a human woman has become the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven, that the glory of the Lord has been made visible, in veiled form, even as it will be made visible on our altar this morning. And in response he says: I have seen Life himself, so my own life is of no account. Use it as you will, Lord, in witness to your glory.
God make us such witnesses. Amen.