‘Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”
The preceding is one of the canticles, or psalm-like hymns, embedded in the text of the Gospel of Luke. It is called the Nunc Dimittis, after the words with which it opens in the Latin Vulgate Bible: “Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine.” It is also called the Song of Simeon, after the old man to whose mouth St. Luke assigns it; the song Christians sing with a special significance, tomorrow, the 40th day of Christmas.
By the Law of Moses, the child Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem, by Mary and Joseph, on his 40th day, to mark the completion of Mary’s purification after childbirth, and to redeem the obligation of her firstborn son to serve in the Temple. (To this day, as I understand, many Jews observe this ritual, called pidyon ha-ben.)
That is where we encounter Simeon, a very old man, “just and devout.” We are told the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Messiah. Thus inspired, he came to the Temple, and there he recognized the Christ, in Mary’s arms. And so, also, an old lady, Anna, a prophetess, recognized the child. And Simeon prophesied, with an aside to Mary, in these riveting words: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul, also.”
This is an important feast, for Christians, bringing an end to the seasons of Christmas and the Epiphany, and looking forward towards Lent and Easter. It is celebrated with august dignity in the Byzantine rite of the Eastern Church, and alike in the “western” or Catholic Church. Anglicans and Lutherans and some other Protestants inherited the Catholic practice.
“Candlemas,” our western name for the feast, comes from the liturgy in the Roman Missal. Candles are blessed by the celebrant in the sanctuary, then distributed through the church, while the choir sings the Nunc Dimittis, repeating the “chorus” or antiphon: “Lumen ad revelationem gentium …”
“A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”
In purely historical terms, we are remembering a moment when the extraordinary spiritual heritage of the ancient Hebrews—chosen and instructed by God, as I solemnly believe, but the history is the same whether or not I believe it—is beginning to explode, and will be carried to the ends of the earth.
Whether or not one is Jewish, one is compelled to acknowledge by any candid review of the facts that the heritage presented in the Old Testament, of an entire people called to a divine mission, is different in quality and kind and duration from anything we know in the ancient world. And whether or not one is Christian, a spiritual, cultural, and even material transformation, on a truly planetary scale, follows from events narrated in the New Testament.
This is history, not faith. But it is unquestionably a history made by faith—by millions, indeed billions over so many centuries, carrying what they have earnestly believed to be the light of Christ in their hearts.
And yes, many tragedies, too, when the light of that moral guidance has flickered and guttered, when charity failed and horrible things were done in Christ’s name. There is shame to go round in every human endeavour, in every religious and national and cultural tradition. But the more interesting question is, what did this tradition positively achieve? What did it accomplish to redeem the usual sins to which flesh is heir, and the characteristic sins of its followers?
But we know very little about Christian history today—which is the history of our own civilization—because it is seldom taught in our schools. When anything at all is taught, the emphasis is generally on slandering the faith, especially of the more sincere Catholics and Evangelicals. The whole history of the Church is reduced to a few malicious slogans about “the Spanish Inquisition” or “the trial of Galileo” or “the Crusades.” All historical context is removed from such events, in order to blacken the sins of Christians as much as possible.
The liberal media recklessly oversimplify contemporary stories, so as to give the impression something done by the Church for a reasonable motive was done for a wicked motive instead. (There was a striking example of this, last week, in the systematic misreporting of the Pope’s withdrawal of several excommunications against members of a breakaway traditionalist sect. It was the usual formula: things that have nothing to do with one another are wantonly juxtaposed in the headlines and leads, in this case for the purpose of tarring the Vatican with anti-Semitism, and stirring trouble between Catholics and Jews.)
It is especially in these times of spreading darkness that we must reach confidently for the light. And, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul, also.”
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