Candlemas Day

 

 

The familiar carol concludes on the 12th day, but today is actually the 40th - and final - day of Christmas. In Catholic countries, it is a common custom for the nativity scene to remain on display in churches until today. (So, 12 years ago, while I was studying at "Saints' School" in Rome, I had almost a full month between my early-January arrival and Candlemas in which to visit the various presepe on display in Rome’s many churches.)

Today is officially the Presentation of the Lord, although for several centuries it was also called the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the Gospel [Luke 2:22-40], Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem according to the law of Moses to observe two important religious obligations. The first was the ordinary obligation in that society to be purified after childbirth, reflecting ancient beliefs about the sacredness of blood and the requirement of ritual purification after any direct contact with blood. The second concerned the special status and religious responsibilities of a first-born son (because of God’s having spared Israel’s first-born at the time of the Exodus from Egypt). 

 

But, whatever the official title, the common popular title for today’s celebration has long been Candlemas Day, because of the Blessing of Candles and the Procession - originally in Rome an early morning, pre-dawn procession, somewhat penitential in character – with which the more solemn celebration of today’s Mass begins. According to The Golden Legend: "On the calends of February the Romans honored Februa the mother of Mars the god of war, by lighting the city with candles and torches throughout the night of that day. ... Since it is hard to relinquish such customs and the Christians, converted from paganism, had difficulty giving them up, Pope Sergius transmuted them, decreeing that the faithful should honor the hold mother of the Lord on this day by lighting up the whole world with lamps and candles."

 

Although electric light is omnipresent, we still use candles. The fact that we no longer use them for ordinary light makes our use of them even more special. The Candlemas candles call attention to light – and to Jesus the One whom their light symbolizes. Candlemas comes at the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the transition (according to one older way of reckoning the seasons) from winter to spring. Soon, day and night, light and dark will be equal. So, this last of the winter light festivals invites us to look ahead to what these winter light festivals are meant to symbolize.

 

Meanwhile, at the same time as we recall with joy the Lord’s entry into his Temple: and suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek (Malachi 3:1-4), we hear wise old Simeon’s words to Mary, the first reference to what lies ahead, the first reference to the cross. Behold, this child is destined … to be a sign that will be contradicted – and you yourself a sword will pierce – so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

 

So, even as we take one last look back at winter and Christmas, Candlemas looks ahead to spring and Lent, and reminds us that the point of Christmas is Easter. Meanwhile, Simeon and Anna’s encounter with the infant Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple points us toward our own encounter with the Risen Christ here and now.

 

In the Gospel, Simeon prays, “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace.” In the Roman Rite, this canticle, known as the Nunc Dimittis, is an important part of daily Night Prayer (Compline). Concerning this, the great 20th-century liturgical scholar Pius Parsch wrote: “As we sing it we see Simeon holding the Child Jesus in his arms and then, with grateful heart, retiring from his earthly service to God. We too are in the Lord’s service. At the close of day we hold the Savior in our arms, mystically speaking; we hold Him in faith, in grace, in the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar. Fervently we thank God for His blessings; and we are prepared, if it be His will, to take our leave from the world.”

Homily for the Feast of the Presentation (Candlemas Day), Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, February 2, 2024.

Counting to Easter

 

With Christmas now well behind us, can Lent be far off? Thanks to the vagaries of the calendar, Lent and Easter will arrive relatively early this year (Ash Wednesday on February 14 and Easter on March 31 respectively). Early or late, however, they remain the centerpiece of the Church's yearly cycle, as the mysteries they celebrate stand at the center of the Christian life. In a sense, life is the very heart of Easter. As the great Pius Parsch [The Church's Year of Grace, Volume 2] put it, "Whereas at Christmas Christ manifested Himself primarily as light, He now [at Easter] manifests Himself in the Church and in the soul as life."

In the old calendar that the Church faithfully used for some 1500 years, today would have been Septuagesima Sunday, the first of three special Sundays - Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima - that marked off these weeks as a distinctive pre-Lenten season. Those lovely Latin names meant the 70th, the 60th, and the 50th day before Easter. Some 1200+ years ago, Charlemagne (who died on this date in 814) is said to have asked why Sundays that were seven days apart were being numbered as if they were ten days apart. A very good question! But even he, King of the Franks and Western Roman Emperor that he was, couldn’t get an answer to this question! (Arithmetic aside, the supposedly 70-day Septuagesima season was traditionally seen as a symbolic season of exile - analogous to the biblical 70-year Babylonian Exile.)

 
Septuagesima wasn't quite Lent, of course. Notably, the traditional Lenten prohibition against the solemnization of marriage did not yet apply until Ash Wednesday, which was why my parents were married 77 years ago on February 15, on what was then the Saturday before Quinquagesima Sunday - the last Saturday  before Ash Wednesday.) And, of course, that season coincided with the festive, pre-Lenten Carnival, culminating on Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras - a season stereotypically associated with un-Lenten excess and pancakes. (Hence the photo above.)

The Septuagesima season did, however, already share some of Lent’s liturgical features – in particular, purple vestments, no Gloria, and, most notably, no Alleluia. For centuries, the Saturday before Septuagesima was the day when Alleluia was said or sung for the last time at the end of Sunday's First Vespers, after which it was not heard again until the end of the Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday morning. In the Middle Ages, the omission of the Alleluia was popularly ritualized by mock funeral rites in which the people, would "bury" the Alleluia (presumably to await its resurrection at Easter). At a time when people's ordinary lives still somewhat followed and reflected the rhythm of the liturgical seasons, these practices alerted people visually and otherwise that Lent was on its way. 

 

In the current calendar, however, Lent starts suddenly on Ash Wednesday, without any preparatory period. But then, of course, the contemporary Lent lacks the strict fasting that so strongly characterized the traditional Lent. So, perhaps not much preparation is needed now! 

In today’s still strangely unending liturgical warfare, there are fanatics who totally disparage the way the Church worshipped for over 1500 years, and others who seem convinced that the Church's worship reached a state of perfection with the 1568 Breviary and the 1570 Missal, to which any improvement is inconceivable and from which all alteration might as well be a sign of the apocalypse. Both positions are absurd, of course. The problem with trying to stake out a plausible position somewhere in between those extremes, however, is that it requires one to make intelligent judgments about which aspects of the post-Tridentine arrangement it may have been wise for the Church to alter and which it may have been less wise for her to change. 

 

Perhaps the best case to be made for eliminating pre-lent from the calendar was that Septuagesima suffered from an inherent in-betweenness - being a little like Lent but not quite Lent yet. Ambiguity is always a challenge, and the bureaucratic mentality that created the current calendar apparently had very little appreciation for ambiguity. 

 

On the other hand, the three now completely lost Sundays each had a magnificent Mass formulary dating back to Pope Saint Gregory the Great's time, and their Roman stational churches - St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, St. Paul's Outside the Walls, St. Peter's - attested to their importance, particularly in terms of the catechumenate. Perhaps, the desire to homogenize traditional liturgical variations that seems to have motivated so much of the reform may have been misplaced. Maybe more discernment might have separated valuable variations from merely antiquarian customs. Its arithmetic may have been off, but the Septuagesima season was liturgically rich, and those riches are now largely lost forever.

 

Of course, the liturgy is not a museum-piece. More significant than the loss of a liturgical season is the fact that it hardly matters - that people's lives no longer reflect the rhythm of the liturgy.  In an earlier age, all those visual and other variations in the liturgy aided the community in letting the liturgical seasons facilitate faith's connection with the rhythms of ordinary life. Today now that that connection has been almost completely severed, even if Septuagesima somehow were to be providentially restored, how much notice would it even get? The real challenge for today is to relearn how to make a connection between faith and ordinary life in our radically unprecedented circumstances.

Image: Pieter Aertsen, “The Pancake Bakery”, 1560.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

 

January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet Army in 1945, has been observed since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Although Auschwitz started out as a POW camp for Polish prisoners, it eventually became perhaps most famous for its part in the Nazis' "Final Solution."  Some 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, a place Pope Saint John Paul II would later (1979) call the "Golgotha of the modern world." The largest group of those murdered at Auschwitz was 960,000 Jews. All told, some six million Jews were murdered in the state-sponsored extermination, now known as the Holocaust, also known as Hurban ("Destruction," a word used originally to refer to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem) and, more familiarly, as Shoah ("Catastrophe").

That, of course, belongs to history, albeit very recent history. The Holocaust would not have been possible were it not for the Second World War, and it was historically unique in important respects. That said, it can also be seen in relation to a longer, tragic history of anti-Semitism, particularly in Christian Europe. Thus, the 20th-century American Protestant theological Reinhold Niebuhr spoke of "the taint with which centuries of Christian oppression in the name of Christ have tainted" what he called "the symbol of Christ as the image of God in the imagination of the Jew" (Pious and Secular America, Scribner's, 1958, p. 108).

After the war, the Christian Churches gradually re-examined their past behavior. 

On October 19, 1945, the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany issued what is colloquially known as its "Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt." This brief document, addressed to the World Council of Churches in Process of Formation, acknowledged that "through us has endless suffering been brought to many peoples and countries." That statement did not specify which particular repel had suffered, but a few months later the Provisional Committee of the WCC in Process of Formation itself directly addressed anti-Semitism, acknowledging "with penitence the failure of the Churches to overcome, in the spirit of Christ, those factors in human relationships which have created and now contribute to this evil which threatens both Jewish and Christian communities," and called on Christians to testify "against the principles and practices of anti-semitism as a denial of the spirit and teaching of our Lord." Subsequent statements, both by the WCC and by German Protestant Churches, grew more detailed. In 1948, a resolution by the German Protestant Church declared, "We believe God's promise to be valid for his Chosen People even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ."

The Roman Catholic Church came considerably later to addressing this issue. In 1964, the Second Vatican Council's "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" (Lumen Gentium, 16), declared: those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. 

This was significantly expanded the following year in "the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions" (Nostra Aetate, 4):

As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock. Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ - Abraham's sons according to faith - are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself. The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Romans 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people. As Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation, nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading. Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle. In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Soph. 3:9). Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues. True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone. Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows. As Yves Congar's My Journal of the Council recalls, these theological and historical developments did not develop easily, in part because of opposition from certain governments. "People will not examine the CONTENT of the Declaration but, whatever that might be, will become inflamed, simply on the grounds that it is favorable to the Jews," Congar wrote, adding "Twenty years after Auschwitz, it is impossible that the Council should say nothing." In fact, it would be another 30 years (1994!) before the Holy See - the only Christian Church which has sovereign status in international law - and the State of Israel, an independent state since 1948, would finally establish diplomatic relations.  No one should minimize the progress that has been made toward repairing the bad history between Christians and Jews that goes back almost to apostolic times. That said, as recent events have highlighted, anti-Semitism is alive and well in the 21st-century. Since the terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023, displays and demonstrations of anti-Semitism have been surprisingly widespread, both in our cities and on university campuses. This is the territory where that ancient evil has asserted itself anew and where it must be dealt with - lest theological statements be reduced to mere words, and observances like today's Holocaust Remembrance Day deteriorate into politically ineffective sentimentality.

Paul's Friends

 

Friendship, Aristotle famously said, is something without which life would be unbearable. Today, however, many Americans say they have no close friends at all. That’s a problem if in fact having friends enriches one’s life and is probably good for one’s health. Aristotle said that no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all sorts of life’s other goods. I think that is no less true in religious life than anywhere else. So, it is fitting that today the Church commemorates two of Saint Paul's close friends - his companions and co-workers Saints Timothy and Titus.

The first reading at today’s Mass (2 Timothy 1:1-8) reflects Paul’s feelings for Timothy and his family: I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. I yearn to see you again, recalling your tears, so that I may be filled with joy, as I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and that I am confident lives also in you. One cannot read those words of Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy without appreciating the intense bond of friendship between the two. 

 

As friends, Paul and Timothy (and Titus, another friend of Paul whom we also commemorate today) shared a common mission - the mission which Paul had received directly from the Risen Lord and which Timothy had received from Paul, the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.

 

Timothy was of mixed Gentile and Jewish parentage. Both his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois were respected members of the Christian community in Lystra by the time Timothy became Paul’s assistant. Unlike Timothy, Titus was a Gentile and a convert, a Greek probably from Antioch. Having been converted by Paul, he served as Paul's assistant and accompanied Paul to the famous Council of Jerusalem. 

 

Jesus, as we just heard in the Gospel, famously sent his disciples out on mission in pairs, not just because a group effort would be more efficient but because of the greater witness value of non-competitive, collaborative life and work in partnership. In the Middle Ages, Saint Dominic, discerned the special witness value of such an apostolic manner of life for his time and place. And, in the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council likewise highlighted how such an evangelical life witnesses to God’s kingdom at work in the world through the Church.

 

In today’s climate of predatory individualism, a dead-end into which our consumerist culture seems increasingly capable of absorbing even religion itself as well as so much of the Church’s life, the renewed witness of shared life and mission cannot be underestimated.

 

Homily for the Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, Disciples and Companions of Saint Paul, Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, New York, January 26, 2024.

Photo: The Beheading of Saint Paul, painting by Robert Reid, Altar of Saint Paul, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

After New Hampshire

One of the many bizarre fantasies that have characterized American politics for the past eight and a half years (ever since Donald Trump's famous ride down Trump Tower's Golden Escalator in June 2015) has been the belief that, if only the Republican primary field could be more quickly winnowed down to Trump and one other, then the majority could coalesce around that other to defeat Trump. After all this time, the first part of that fantasy finally happened in New Hampshire 2024, only to have result in the opposite of the second part. When the moment finally came, the voters (i.e., Republican primary voters) made it absolutely clear where their preference lies. 

No one should really have been surprised by this. If the moneyed, zombie Reaganite elite that used to run the party - the rich who undoubtedly believe the country is theirs to rule by right - still believed the party was theirs and that their un-rich, taken-for-granted constituents whom they have for decades brought off with culture-war sloganeering were still in their pockets, then they were likely the only ones who still believed one of their own could be imposed upon their increasingly left-behind and increasingly angry-about-it constituents. 

Unlike Ron DeSantis, who tried to win as an un-Trump Trump who could somehow outdo Trump, Nikki Haley was that elusive zombie Reaganite Republican that theoretically the party was waiting for - except that the shrinking part of the party that wanted what she was selling is getting smaller all the time! Instead, the left-behind base has finally left that part of the party behind - a sentiment so bluntly encapsulated in Don, Jr.'s remarks at Trump's victory party in New Hampshire, when he said of Haley, “She’s going to send your kids to go off and die and she couldn’t care less.”

Who knows if that would actually happen if Haley were elected. She won't be elected. So we will likely never know. But the sentiment speaks volumes, and maybe more than any other expresses the underlying resentment and rage behind the overthrow of the zombie Reaganite Republican elite. In the end, of course, Trump's faux Populism may prove less salvific than his constituents expect. It represents the sort of anger-fueled movement politics that, whether on the right or on the left, always ends badly. But that is another topic for another day! Meanwhile, whatever the future of the Republican Party, it is becoming increasingly hard to imagine it reverting to the Reaganite monstrosity that served its elite so well and the country so poorly for so long.