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CandlemassWhen our little grand-daughter, Catherine, was born in Cyprus two years ago, it was an occasion of great joy; a joy which was greatly enhanced by the kindness of our daughter's Greek Cypriot neighbours who all came round with little gifts and wanted to hold the baby. Nothing unusual about that. Cypriots are, after all, very fond of children. The reaction continued to be kind and polite, yet tinged with some degree of surprise (if not exactly shock, horror) when we took the little one out in her pram. I was a new Orthodox then and unfamiliar with the ways of Orthodox countries. "We never take a baby outside the house until it's forty days old" someone said. In my blissful ignorance I thought this was just some local custom until the following morning when I chanced to be in St. Lazarus' Cathedral - an oasis of peace in the bustling market town of Larnaca to which I always try to escape. A young couple came into church and presented a baby wrapped up in a shawl to the priest on duty. The priest got out his little prayer book and intoned a short prayer in the archaic Byzantine Greek which is used as the universal medium of liturgical worship throughout the Greek Orthodox world. In a few moments it was all over and Mum, Dad and Baby were on their way. In a trice I twigged to what was going on. It was that baby's first excursion outside the home to go to church to receive a pre-Baptism blessing at the age of forty days. Why ? The answer can be found in The Gospel according to St.Luke, Chapter 2. This tells the story of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple - celebrated either as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or as Candlemas. In the Old Testament we read (Leviticus Ch12) of the Jewish laws governing the behaviour of a woman who had given birth. There was a period during which she was considered unclean, after which a baby boy must be circumcised. There then followed a longer period during which the woman must not touch anything consecrated nor go into the sanctuary. The length of both these periods varied according to the sex of the baby. At this point the woman was considered to be purified and her first duty then was to take her baby to the door of the sanctuary and present it to the priest. This presentation was to be accompanied by a burnt offering and a sin offering of sacrificial animals. In the case of Jesus, Mary and Joseph would of course have been subject to these strictures. Leviticus tells us that the appropriate sacrifice was a lamb for the burnt offering and a young turtle dove or pigeon for the sin offering. If the parents could not afford a lamb then two turtle doves or pigeons would suffice. We can presume from St.Luke's version that this was so in the case of Mary and Joseph. What we have related so far was little more than standard practice, observed for hundreds of thousands of children in Biblical Israel. We can easily parallel the current practice of Orthodoxy because the only real difference is the lack of a sacrifice. Given that Christ's death on the cross was a once-and-for-all sacrifice that never needs to be repeated, the concept of sacrificing a lamb or a bird is now obsolete. But this was no ordinary baby and clearly there is a deeper significance. Two other people were involved. First there is Simeon - righteous Simeon whose words on seeing the infant Jesus are contained in what has been known to generations of worshippers under the Latin title of Nunc Dimittis : Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace According to Thy word For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation Which Thou has prepared before the face of all people To be a light to lighten the gentiles And to be the glory of Thy people Israel Simeon, having been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the true Messiah, takes the baby Jesus in his arms and says these words. Then he tells Mary that the child is destined to be the Saviour but that her own heart would be pierced in order that the hearts of many might be revealed. Then there was Anna, a prophetess who had devoted her life to the service of the Lord. Anna also realised who Jesus was and proclaimed his arrival to all she saw. So the Presentation was not just a matter of compliance with the formalities of the day. In a very real sense it was a proclamation of the arrival on earth of the Incarnate Christ. That arrival was instantly recognised by those who wanted to recognise it and were in a sufficient state of grace so to do - it still is ! John Moore |
