Candlemas

Several of my clerical friends were celebrating Candlemas yesterday, one of them at St Paul's Cathedral to mark the retirement of Bishop Chartres of London. I am very pleased about this - not about Bishop Chartres retiring, particularly, but that the great feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is being celebrated on the correct day rather than being shunted to the nearest Sunday as the Roman Catholics tend to do with everything (one understands why, of course).

At some churches, such as this one in Texas, all the candles to be used in church are blessed and the faithful bring others in to join in the fun and then take them home to be lit at important times. At Swanvale Halt we are perforce less ambitious, but we still process around the church with our own individual candles while I try to sing the office hymn, 'Sing how the age-long promise of a Saviour'. One day, one day, we will have a choir who will sing all the proper antiphons and sequences, but not yet: for now it's just me. This year I ended up spattered with green wax from the Paschal Candle. There weren't that many of us - sixteen souls - but the effect on those who do come is what matters: the deepening of their engagement with the saving events of Jesus's life as we bear him in our hands in wax, and cord, and light. How gracious he is to allow us to do so.