Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas) 2025
Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2: 22-40
I moved to the distinctly rural parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock, in the July of a certain year, and the following Candlemas I was leading an Assembly in the parish primary school, a tiny school with fewer than forty pupils, most of them from farming families.
“What do you think,” I asked, “that I found most difficult, coming as a townie to live in the country?”
One lad put his hand up: “The smell of the cow muck”, he ventured, with an embarrassed giggle. It was a reasonable answer, but not the correct one. Various other replies were offered, till eventually someone hit the spot: “The darkness” they suggested.
That was exactly right, and I related how, in the autumn, I had walked up the lane in the early evening to visit a family. As I was leaving, the lady of the house asked “Have you got a torch”?
“Why would I want a torch?” I wondered, but I accepted the loan of one without demur. No sooner had I stepped out into the lane than I understood why. Having spent all my life aided and abetted by street lamps (gas at first; later electric, though on our road, which was an A road, they were always electric) I had never lived in a place where people lived in lanes which lay in total darkness. Oddly enough, there is one street lamp, at the entrance to the parish cemetery: why the people in there need one, I have no idea.
Light is something which we take for granted. The candles which we have carried today are purely symbolic: we don’t need them to light our way.
That is not the case everywhere. A Ugandan priest, who lodged with me in Preston, was puzzled by the concept of different lengths of day at different times of year. Living close to the Equator, he found this a strange phenomenon. “Do people go to bed at half past three in winter?” he asked, a reasonable question from someone used to living with little or no artificial light.
Consequently, when Simeon pointed to the infant Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” this would have made a far greater impact than it does for us. Perhaps only during power cuts—or if we live in the country—do we appreciate how dependent we are on light; and therefore how dependent we are on Jesus.
His light shines less on our eyes than on our minds. Without Him to reveal Himself to us, we wander in a spiritual darkness which deprives us of true understanding, and indeed of life. One of my favourite hymns is St. John Henry Newman’s “The Pillar and the Cloud” better known as “Lead Kindly Light” which is one of those recommended by the Church for use at Night Prayer.
“Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on…..
Keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene,
One step enough for me.”
(Incidentally, Canon Gibson has a couple of lines from that hymn inscribed on his gravestone, which is ready and waiting for him in Yealand churchyard: there is nothing like being prepared.)
We need Jesus to light our way, step by step, day by day, through the shadows and occasional blackness of life. We need to keep in mind also some other words of Simeon, who prophesies that this child, although He brings and is light, will be rejected. He will be a semeion antilegomenon –a sign that is opposed, a sign that is rejected, a sign of contradiction—literally, a sign that is spoken against.
If we are genuinely following the light that is Christ, it won’t be a smooth and simple journey. We will encounter opposition and rejection; we shall come up against worldly values which are at odds with our own; like our mother Mary who is, in all things, the model of the Church, we shall find that our souls are pierced. Like her, and with her, we shall stand at the foot of the Cross, but the light of Christ, though it may sometimes shine dimly, will never be extinguished in us.
