Candlemas today – the end of Christmas and (taking an optimistic view) the beginning of spring, certainly a point from which we can look back to Christmastide and forward to the coming of the next season. It was a mild, even sunny morning here, so it was easy enough to sense a touch of spring in the air – and the more so because I saw my first butterfly of the year (just seven weeks since I saw the last one of 2020!). This was a Peacock, not blindly fluttering as if wakened early from hibernation but flying vigorously along a short row of houses, from one sunny frontage to the next, pausing once on a porch roof, then disappearing into a back garden. This was even earlier than my first Peacock of last year, and was a joyous surprise so early in the season. Of course, according to traditional weather lore, a mild, sunny day today means that winter will be coming back with a vengeance. Well, we'll see...
Candlemas celebrates the presentation of the 40-day-old Jesus in the Temple. Here, as Luke relates, he is seen by the aged Simeon, a man nearing the end of his life, who recognises in this baby the promised saviour, and speaks the words we now known as the Nunc Dimittis: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation...' A wonderfully eloquent late painting by Rembrandt, unfinished at his death (and perhaps altered later), shows Simeon at this moment of revelation...
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