The Light in the Temple

Vestal, by Christopher Cielos

Propers: The First Sunday of Christmas, AD 2023 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now here’s a Christmas story that you don’t hear very often, one related to us only by St Luke, which goes by many names amongst the festivals of the Church. Catholics tend to call it the Purification of the Blessed Virgin; Protestants usually go with the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue; while in the Christian East it’s known simply as Hypapante, the Meeting.

Personally, I prefer the old English title Candlemas. But y’all being Americans here, you most likely know it, due to a strange bit of folklore, as Groundhog Day. There’s a lot going on in this one simple passage, more than enough for a Bible Study or even an extended series. But we have only this homily at the moment, so let’s dive right on in.

“When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they”—that is, Mary and Joseph—“brought him”—that is, Jesus—“up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” In other words, 40 days after Mary had given birth, she would be considered ritually purified, and thus able, in good faith, to return to worship at the Temple.

In this case, the Law of Moses is concerned with ceremonial rather than moral purity. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with childbirth; it’s considered a blessing. But Luke’s point here is that Jesus’ parents are observant and upright Jews; they will raise their Son as such. Christians, by and large, don’t concern ourselves much with ritual purity, nor with the ceremonial commandments of the Law. But there is an old tradition, called the “churching of women,” that blesses and welcomes a new mother back to worship when she’s ready.

At the time of Jesus, the Jerusalem Temple functioned as the focus of religious Jewish life. Here the Holy Family dedicates Mary’s firstborn Son to the Lord, the God both of Israel and of all. They perform the sacrifice prescribed for the poor: a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. Luke’s Mary has as yet no treasures of frankincense or gold to spend. Mary is thus Purified; Jesus is Presented; now comes the Meeting.

Simeon is an enigmatic soul. We know little of him, save that he is righteous and devout, a denizen of Jerusalem—and that the Holy Spirit rests upon him. This latter is no trivial detail. Jewish tradition holds that genuine prophecy ended with the Prophet Malachi some 400 years before Jesus’ birth. The post-Exilic faithful had the Torah to guide them, but not the Holy Spirit save within the holy texts. The line of the Prophets had ceased, until the Messiah would come.

So for Luke to say that the Spirit rested on Simeon is not simply some polite praise. It is a declaration of the Messianic Age, the return of the Prophets to herald forth the Christ.

Now Simeon possessed a particular promise from God: that he would not taste death before he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph enter the Temple, the Spirit guides Simeon to them, and with breathless glee he takes up the Christchild in his arms. Would that we had more details! What must Jesus’ mother and His earthly father think of this stranger grabbing their infant? But then Simeon breaks into song:

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled: my own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people: a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.

We call this prayer the Nunc Dimittis, the Song of Simeon, and Christians recite it at Compline, our prayer before bed, every night throughout the world. It is a declaration of joy, the consummation of ancient hope. And let us not forget it is his deathsong. We are not told how old Simeon might be, yet it is clear that this moment is the culmination of his life. He and his people have waited for so long, and now he sees with his own eyes, now he holds in his two hands, the Messiah, the God-Man, the Savior of all worlds.

He can die now at peace. He can die now suffused in his bliss.

At this point another prophet appears—two for one, as it were—and her name is Anna, a daughter of the Tribe of Asher. Anna is a widow at the age of 84, and she lives night and day within the Temple, never leaving, ever worshipping, fasting, and praying. Here we have someone remarkable: a female prophet, something of a rarity within the Hebrew Scriptures; of the Tribe of Asher, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, scattered to the winds centuries ago by the depredations of the Assyrian Empire.

But more than that, she appears to be a Temple Virgin. Temple Virgins were an enigmatic group, prototype nuns, if you will, of whom we get but glimpses, a smattering of verses scattered throughout Exodus, Samuel, Maccabees, the Talmud. They seem to have lived at the Temple in Jerusalem, where they wove the sacred priestly garments, and more importantly the massive veil separating the Holy of Holies from the Sanctuary—the same veil betwixt heaven and earth torn at Jesus’ Resurrection.

These Temple Virgins could only serve either before puberty or after menopause, due to those aforementioned ceremonial rules. Legend has it that Mary was a dedicated Temple Virgin before her marriage to Joseph. The prophet Anna is a widow, and so not a virgin in our modern puritanical sense, yet she has clearly dedicated her life to God, and now becomes the first to publicly proclaim the coming of the Christ. Luke is always concerned both with the Temple and with women.

It is due to Simeon’s song, announcing Christ as the Light of the world, that we call this event the Candlemas, commemorated on the 40th day after Christmas, February 2nd, when candles traditionally would be blessed for public worship and household devotions. 40 is always a symbolic number in the Bible, as the ancients knew that it took roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. 40 always indicates then a time of hardship, growth, and pain, leading at last to new life, new birth, and new beginnings.

We are warned that the road won’t be easy when Simeon turns to Mary and tells her that her Child is destined for the falling and the rising of many, that “a sword shall pierce your own soul too.” This foreshadows her grief at Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion. Christians often portray in our art Mary pierced by swords of sorrow. She suffers with her Son.

There is something in these prophets, in Simeon and Anna, that has captured the imagination of Christians for the last 2000 years. They share a patient endurance of faith, which comes to fruition at the end of a lifelong and arduous journey. They do not live to see Him grown, to hear the words and watch the wonders and marvel at the Resurrection of the Christ. They don’t have to. They know that God is faithful, that He has kept His promises, remembered His people.

They have seen the Kingdom come, seen it in this Child, so now they can depart in peace.

Some have derided faith as belief without evidence. Others have praised it as the hope of things unseen. Christians have argued over whether faith can rest in works or whether it abides within realms of abstraction. Yet faith, my friends, has never been a thing that we must do. We can’t even properly speak of it as though it were a choice. Faith is simply trust: trust in the faithfulness of God, in His Goodness and Beauty and Truth, in His mercy and the sureness of His grace.

There is so much that troubles our world, so much that troubles our souls. It wasn’t any different back then, for Simeon or for Anna. Their world stood poised on the brink of disaster. Yet they were at peace, devoid of all anxiety, rejoicing, for they had seen the Lord fulfill His promise here within this Child.

To know God in Christ Jesus is to live beyond fear, beyond ego, beyond the grave. It is to be fully alive at 84, fully alive in a chaotic world, fully alive even in death. For our own eyes have seen the salvation: a light to reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your people Israel.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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