Saturday, February 2, 2019 The Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

                                   _______John 8:32_

   









              
              If you 

              continue 

              in my 

              word…

              you will 

              know the

              truth and 

                    the truth will set you free.”

When I got up it was not yet raining,  so I went down to the 8 o’clock mass in Old Town, since it’s the  Presentation and we were electing the next  bishop today. (On the first ballot, a woman was elected from outside the Diocese, Susan Snook.)

     The priest was 

a pleasant round faced Nigerian but difficult to understand. It’s always so weird to be in a Roman mass because it’s like home but then when you get really cozy the words are just that much different. During his homily he said that the candle symbolizes the feast, and that the wax represented the physical body of Jesus which melts away in the course of his ministry.  (I forget what the wick represented.)  

     Afterwards I went across the street and had some breakfast sitting in front of the lit if fake fire, which was nice. And there as I read Morning Prayer I got my verse.   When I came home I went searching for an image of a lit taper. As I looked, I was amazed because I found very few pictures of real candles.  Mostly they were battery powered and it led me down some very interesting paths. What does that do to the image of Jesus melting away if what we have is not an actual  wax candle?  No fuss, no muss, no cleanup. No sacrifice . No reality. 

     I’ve been thinking a lot about the symbols we as Christians use -  what do they actually say about us and what we believe? What, for instance, does the hierarchical nature of the church say?  Is that what we we want to be saying? Does it reflect Jesus’ ideal of ministry?  

     One of the things the priest said was that 
“The light reveals what is already there."