MARY AND CANDLEMAS AND PIDYON HABEN by Bobbie Ann Cole

Yesterday was Candlemas. This festival has been celebrated on 2^nd February since the 5^th century. It is still celebrated today by Anglicans, Catholics and other denominations.

Candlemas brings light to mid-winter through candles lit at churches to symbolize Jesus as the Light of the World. The original meaning of this festival, however, was to mark forty days from Christmas, considered the birthday of Jesus.

Luke’s Gospel (2:22-40) tells that, on this day, Mary and Joseph went to the Jerusalem Temple for her Purification after Childbirth, in accordance with Torah, (Lev. 12), and for the Redemption of the Firstborn (Pidyon haBen) for Jesus.

The Redemption of the Firstborn remembers how God saved the firstborn male Israelite slaves from the Angel of Death, who passed over their homes, whose doors were daubed with the blood of a lamb, at the time of the Tenth Plague of Egypt.

Ever since, firstborn sons have been deemed to belong to God, unless redeemed by their families. Everyone, except the priests of the Land, was required to do this for their firstborn males. In Jesus’ time the ceremony took place at the Temple with money and a form of words.

On any given day, the area around the fifteen semi-circular steps leading up to the gleaming, copper Nicanor Gate in the Court of the Women must have been heaving with parents and babies, waiting for a priest to redeem their son. Many of the mothers would, like Mary, have been little more than children themselves, in their early teens.

Mary must have been thinking with relief that her problems and challenges were behind her. She had faced pregnancy of an apparently illegitimate child. The society of the time had a strict, honour-shame code. Mary, having brought shame on her family, risked stoning. At the very least, she could have been cast out, especially as her betrothed, refusing to acknowledge that he was the father, had wanted to break off the engagement.

All seemed to be turning out well at last, however. She was a wife, a mother, a fertile daughter of Israel, all the things most Jewish women of the time wanted for themselves. She had status. She was blessed.

Jesus’ redemption ceremony was carried out by a well-known elderly priest named Simeon, whom the Holy Spirit had called upon to be there. God had promised that he would meet the Messiah before he died. The moment he saw Jesus, he recognised him and declared to Mary and Joseph he was the long-awaited Messiah.

This was a confirmation of what Mary already knew, through her son’s miraculous conception (Luke 1).

Simeon understood that the Messiah would not be welcomed by everyone. He prophesied: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against.” Many would disapprove of him, even hate him.

This was not easy to hear but it was vague and about some unknown time. What followed was directed at Mary and more immediately telling.

“Mary, you, too,” Simeon said, “A sword will pierce your very soul.”

Her troubles were not at an end, as she had thought.  They were only just beginning.  

 

 

Bobbie Ann Cole, Christian author, speaker and writing teacher, is writing The Messiah’s Mother, a first-person ‘memoir’ of Mary’s painful journey from mother to disciple during Jesus’ ministry. Find out more at http://messiahsmother.com