The article of the month

This Month… by Teresa Caldecott Cialini

Our Art Essay this issue is on an illumination from an 11th-century book of Blessings depicting the Presentation of the Lord (2 February). This event in the life of Jesus is a double pivot: thematically closing the extended Christmas season as the final step in Christ’s infancy, it also points forward to the Passion when the Son of God will be offered as the Sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It is a hinge between the Old and New Covenants.

Like the etching we feature on page 40, the “Engilmar Benedictional” depicts the Temple scene as intensely Eucharistic, and Fr Innocent Smith unpacks how the scene acts as a kind of Benediction. He shares the Blessing of the People provided for the Feast in the Benedictional, which invites the faithful “to join themselves to the offering commemorated in the liturgical feast so that the Holy Spirit might dwell ever more richly in their hearts: ‘May you be able to offer to him gifts of chastity or charity in place of turtledoves, and may you be abundant in the gifts of the Holy Spirit in place of pigeons. Amen.’”

These two turtledoves of charity and chastity are an appropriate cause for reflection in this Valentine’s Day month, where “Love” gets talked up and misunderstood in equal measure. But even the world knows instinctively that true love always involves the preparedness to sacrifice something, to suffer if necessary. Just at the point in the year at which the world is obsessing about these sentiments, we are pondering both care for the sick (a focus for the Church around the feastday of Our Lady of Lourdes on Wednesday 11th) and, on Wednesday 18th, entering into the Lenten season: a time of sacrifice and cleansing.

For Christians, these “turtledove” virtues are the backbone of all the other virtues, the channels through which our Love can be purified. “Purification” is another term that can be misunderstood in the modern world. But when we look closer at the Jewish practices we can see that it has less to do with things being dirty in the moral sense and everything to do with an appreciation of the sacred—embodied in God’s Law for the people of the Old Covenant. There is no better place to see this than in the second element of the Jewish ceremonies Mary and Joseph came to the Temple to undertake: the Purification of the mother, when a woman who had given birth to a male child came to the Temple to be “cleansed” by the prayers of the priest. The act of bringing new life into the world was so holy, so wrapped up with the creative act of God himself, that a woman needed a special rite, to tread across a sacred threshold, in order to be reintegrated with ordinary life.

Offering Up Not Giving Up

In Lent we can hope and strive to be like the Prophetess Anna, whose worshipping with fasting and prayer clarifies her vision when she encounters the Christ Child. But if we approach them merely as a negative act, making sacrifices can feel far off from living a love-oriented life. Far better to “offer up” as a positive action than merely deprive ourselves and thereby starve our souls. If our Lent is to be a forty-day-long Offertory, then we should be thinking of what we can give, instead of merely “give up”. Both charity (in acts and spirit) and chastity (properly understood) should be like this. They are not mere rules to follow but gifts placed on the altar for God to take as a holocaust and use as he wishes.

The prayer element cannot be neglected, of course. Following Christ’s consistent example from the desert to the mountainside, living the life of charity manifested in the Beatitudes (laid out in the first Sunday Gospel this month) is made possible through the life of prayer. Looking to that Teacher depicted on our cover we must find ways to stay close to him in order to stay the course and partake in the life he offers us in the Sermon on the Mount. As Fr D’Elbée says in the meditation on the 5th, “We have all the power of love at our disposal, the omnipotence of Jesus, who said, Have confidence; I have overcome the world. But the victory depends on our faith in him, on our hope, on our charity. Oh how beautiful it is, how encouraging, that the weaker we are, and the more we feel our weakness, the more this power of Jesus, if we are united to him, is ours.”

The Opportunity of Lent

“Lent is a time of truth,” wrote Saint John Paul II. “Christians, called by the Church to prayer, penance, fasting and self-sacrifice, place themselves before God and recognise themselves; they rediscover themselves…. Saint Paul says: So we are ambassadors for Christ (2 Co 5:20). It is here that our responsibility lies. We are sent to other people, to our brothers and sisters. Let us respond generously to the confidence that Christ thus places in us.… Let us examine ourselves sincerely, honestly, and simply. Our brothers and sisters are there among the poor, the sick, the outcast, the aged. What sort of love do we have? What sort of truth?… So open your minds to look around you, open your hearts to understand and sympathise, open your hands to help.”

The Beatitudes are exactly what we need in order to enter into the discipline of Lent. We need to be inspired by this promise of “blessedness” when we make an effort to act in accordance with the Kingdom we hope to inherit: not passively, but actively choosing the way of meekness, peace, sorrow, and mercy. That requires trust in Jesus because rather than being the easy way out, it takes the most strength of all. The child who blesses us by his beatific presence at Candlemas is the same person whose real presence on the altar accompanies us throughout this truly blessed, if rigorous, season of Lent.