The Advent Wreath, week by week, sees the lighting of another candle. The intention being to complete the circle in time for Christmas and to light the central candle – the white one – representing Christ. For this lighting to take place, the other candles need to have their moment too. It would make no sense to light just one candle and leave it at that. The journey through Advent is represented in the weekly lighting. So too, it seems to me, the story of our Faith Journey. Lights along the way – each one receiving the touch of the flame of faith, so that it can take its place in the telling of the Sacred Story.
Today we celebrate the Feast of The Presentation in the Temple. I think it’s a lovely Feast Day that sees a young couple responding to tradition whereby their forty day old baby is presented to The Lord. When in Hounduras towards the end of last year with Trocaire, I witnessed something of this at a Sunday Mass when a young couple presented their baby at the Offertory of the Mass and the priest received the baby into his arms, turned towards the Altar and raised the baby on high. The congregation applauded the moment and the parents beamed with happiness. Later we were told the baby was forty days old and that this is tradition too for families there.
Little boy with his parents and the priest after Sunday Mass in Honduras (November 2016)
We bless candles in the churches today. These will be used in our churches during the coming year. People bring candles for blessing too. Some they leave in the church for use there and others they bring home so that there will be “blessed” candles in their homes. Again a lovely tradition.
“Candlemus Day” Kilmovee Parish Church
One of the things I like about this Feast Day is the coming together of generations for that is very much at the heart of the Gospel account. The baby carried by Joseph and Mary, a young couple, are approached by Simeon and Anna, two of the oldest people in the Temple at that moment and a conversation begins. It is a conversation rooted in faith for the old man, Simeon, had been told he’d not die without laying his eyes on “The Christ”. He knew his moment had come and felt drawn to this little family grouping. So too, Anna, who at the age of eighty-four spent all her waking hours in the Temple at prayer. It’s lovely the way they can blend as one around Christ. It always strikes me that the church on any given Sunday is a place where the generations meet under one roof to be together, gathered in faith.
Yesterday we had something of this in our schools when grandparents came along to spend time with their children’s children during Catholic Schools Week. Again, a lovely and memorable moment for all.
Part of “Grandparents’ Gathering” in Kilmovee N.S. Catholic Schools Week 2017
Today we value the generations, respect them, learn from them and, in all that, seek to come to know and recognise Christ.
“The Crib” complete – the Kings have arrived. Twelfth Night
As a child, I remember going to Sligo with my parents on Christmas Eve. We’d go in the afternoon, spend a few hours in Sligo and call to Cloonamahon (then a Passionist Monastery near Collooney) or maybe to the Friary or Cathedral in Sligo and go to Confessions. We’d have a bite to eat as well and I remember these days as being very special.
On our way home, my mother (God rest her) would comment on the candles in the windows of houses. They weren’t electric nor were they “bridges” but single candles burning in the windows of houses. The darkness of the night made them all the more present and my mother would tell us these candles were put there to pave the way for the welcoming of Jesus. Santa Claus was everything to us, as children, but the candles weren’t for him – they were for the Holy Family and meant to guide their way to the Bethlehem Stable. She’d talk about candles in her own home in Cloonloo and the memories she had of them. The candles burned through the night and just for two nights during Christmas; Christmas Eve and the “twelfth night”. On both occasions, people on a journey it seems, needed help to trace their path. People were more than willing to help them. It’s a good memory.
Nowadays candles burn in the windows throughout Christmas and maybe even longer. The wick and wax are replaced by electric “Candle Arches” or LED tee lights. The idea is there but it’s not exactly the same. There’s something about the candle – burning itself away to give light where otherwise there would only be darkness. There’s something too about just lighting on Christmas Eve and the Twelfth Night. Something linking journey with our homes and our homes with people on journey.
We’re at the “twelfth night” now – tomorrow Christmas comes to an end. Somehow we seem to miss this point year after year that, though the Season ends, its purpose remains. The birth of a child marks the end of a pregnancy and months of waiting and hoping that all will be well. It’s not an end though for the life of the child becomes the focus, and the child becoming a boy or girl and in time, man or woman, is the full story. We’d never imagine leaving the baby a baby – even if we wanted to, we couldn’t for life brings with it growth.
So too, the Spiritual Life. We move away from the crib tonight but we journey into the Ministry of Jesus and find again, hear again, his Call to be better people because He lives.
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