From Mother Anne-Marie
The month of February in 2018 sees both the end of Christmas and the beginning of Lent. I know for most people Christmas ended on 6th January after Twelfth Night, or even earlier if the time people take down their decorations is anything to go by. But in the Church Christmas goes on until 2nd February, Candlemas. The season between 6th January and the 2nd February is called the Epiphany season and we continue to wear white vestments in church.
Of course, nowadays many churches transfer weekday feasts to a Sunday, so your local church may have kept the feast of the Epiphany on Sunday 7th, or Candlemas on 28th January in which case Candlemas would be kept in January! I know at least two churches in our team are keeping Candlemas on the Sunday after 2nd February, on Sunday 4th February. This is not what the Church of England’s lectionary says you should do, but it seems to make more sense!
Approximately two weeks later Lent then begins with Ash Wednesday, which this year falls on 14th February. This is in an interesting clash of dates. Some of us will be being penitential that Wednesday evening at a church service and others will be out on romantic dates, eating lovely meals with champagne and heart shaped chocolates!
Increasingly the Church’s calendar seems out of step with the secular Calendar. The keeping of Advent as a reflective time of waiting has become increasingly difficult in a world where Christmas begins on 1st December. Our Diocesan Bishop, Christopher Chessun, made a plea in the Diocesan newspaper, The Bridge, for the keeping of Advent. This plea may be heard by some Christians, but I think it is a lost cause in the world in general. It is the same when it comes to keeping up decorations until 6th January. Some people still do this but in general most people seem to dismantle their trees and lights once New Year has been celebrated. My grandmother was a stickler about when you took the decorations down and if you forgot to take them down on the 6th January they had to stay up until Candlemas on 2nd February, the end of Christmas. One year I remember a balloon got missed on 6th January and it stayed up, gradually shrinking in size until Candlemas came and she took it down!
Ash Wednesday now has little meaning to the general community. It is a brave person who attends an early service on that day and goes to work with the ash cross on their foreheads. Most of us, if we go to church at all, go in the evening and the likelihood then of having to explain the smudge of black on our foreheads to someone is very remote. As Christians we increasingly live a rhythm of life according to the Church Calendar which is different to many people around us. We maybe able to learn from those of other faiths, who have had to do this for a much longer time.
On Radio 4’s Sunday Programme on New Year’s Eve, there was a really interesting item where the reporter visited a Rabbi’s home for Shabbat (the Sabbath) and her Moslem friend came too. They talked about living with the Jewish and Islamic calendars which are out of synch with the secular calendar. They both live by two calendars – the secular one and their faith one. Both of their faith calendars are governed by the moon although the Jewish faith inserts an extra month every so often, so they largely keep in synch with the seasons. The Moslem woman talked about keeping Eid, the joyous day at the end of Ramadan, when it falls in the middle of a working work. There is a challenge for them to keep faith festivals in the midst of a world getting on with its busyness. They both talked about the sacredness of time and how their faith calendars helped them to recognise God given time and to value it.
As Christians we will be enriched if we live by our faith Calendar, hold on to its traditions and feasts, and value the sacred time that we have been given. Personally, I do not like transferring feasts to the nearest Sunday. I would like Epiphany to be kept on the 6th January and Candlemas on 2nd February and have our services then. This would keep us far more in touch with the Church’s year and the richness of its feasts and what they offer us. Ash Wednesday is still kept on a Wednesday and Ascension Day still kept on a Thursday. But for how long? Let us value the sacredness of time, and make the sacrifice of time to go to church on Ash Wednesday and then use Lent, a God given precious time of 40 days, to reflect on our use of time and perhaps rebalance our lives to include more time in prayer, and study of our Christian faith, before the great feast of Easter.