Dear Brothers and Sisters – today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. It marks the day when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem to be sanctified to the Lord. Our readings today reflect the process of testing, refining, purification, and waiting that must accompany sanctification. Malachi reminds us that being purified means enduring the extremely painful experience of going through fire or being doused in lye. The letter to the Hebrews points out that even Jesus was tested through suffering before he transcended death. And our Gospel gives us the figures of Simeon and Anna, who had been waiting for years, in fasting and prayer, for the appearance of the saviour.
Today’s mass is also known as Candlemas. With all the candles, right? There is an odd number of days between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox and the second of February is exactly the middle day. We are waiting for Spring, for Easter, and today marks the turning point from the darkest time of year into new light, and new life. We still have to wait, but we now wait with hope, as the sun grows stronger and life begins to emerge from the darkness of winter.
Today is also Groundhog Day. You probably know how that works, but again, whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not lets us know how much longer we have to wait until spring. There is a very famous movie which many of you have probably seen called Groundhog Day. In it a TV weatherman has to cover Groundhog Day which takes place in the small town of Punxutawney, as it does in actual fact, in real life. He is a sarcastic and difficult man who is disappointed by life and irritated by having had to do this ridiculous job for the fourth year in a row. After having spent a frustrating day, he wakes up in the morning and it is the same day again, in every detail. And the next morning is the same again, and the morning after that. He is stuck in the 2nd of February over and over and over. The movie never gives a reason why this has happened to him, and is never explicit about how long he has to spend in this one day, though the general consensus around the internet is that it could not have been less than 34 years.
The movie is so famous that I’ve heard many people compare their lives to the character’s life in Groundhog Day, reliving the same day over and over. In fact, monastic life is much like this. Our days as monks seldom vary. We live regulated lives. We sleep and rise and eat, celebrate mass, and pray in choir at the same times each day with the same people each day. We are assigned jobs that we often keep for years and years. One monk noticed that every day at dinner time, he would go into the pantry to get a spoon, turn around, and, at that exact moment, the same brother would be walking past the with a mug of water in his hand, exactly the same as yesterday and the day before.
In the movie, the main character goes through various phases as the days repeat. He indulges in bad behaviour, going through the deadly sins, gluttony, lust, and greed, then reaching anger and what we call acedia, boredom and despair. None of it satisfies him. Indulging in his appetites and impulses brings him no relief, provides no lasting comfort. There is no escape from the limits of his own selfishness and his own will.
This can happen to us, as well. The repetition of monastic life can be draining. Michael Casey, in a borrowed phrase, enshrined the following definition of monastic life in our very Constitutions, “ordinary, obscure, and laborious.” Not glamorous at all. Not exciting at all. Pretty much the same today as it was yesterday, as it was the day before. This repetition, this sameness can be discouraging. It can lead us to feel despair, as if the monastery is falling apart, as if there is no future worth working for. We can look around us and point fingers – if only my brothers were better, if only the rules were better kept, if only this person or that person would take some responsibility or stop doing that thing that irritates me so much, this monastery would be a better place. And to be completely honest, I am not pointing fingers at anybody else when I say this, because I have caught myself thinking these very thoughts. As recently as yesterday. And today is still young. As the abbot said in his chapter talk this morning, suffering can simply be the long, slow suffering of perseverance.
But what happens in the movie? Well, the main character begins to realize that outside circumstances are not going to change, that he has to live within the restrictions of what that single day in this particular small town with these particular people presents to him. He begins to look outside himself, to take a genuine interest in the people around him. Even though he knows every little thing about every single person, this no longer leads him to contempt but compassion. He sees the richness and the value of every life. And he realizes that helping other people, being kind and compassionate, actually makes him happy, and brings him the satisfaction that living for his own pleasure never gave him. He is no longer simply enduring, but preparing himself for the eventual dawn of a new day. He has been purified, refined through suffering.
The scriptures today teach us about waiting, waiting for salvation, waiting for Jesus to be manifest in our lives. But this waiting is not passive. We are not simply sitting inert, waiting for winter to end. We are being tested, purified, refined whether we want to be or not. The discomfort of this process may drive us to wish to escape, to take refuge in distraction or recrimination, but the process itself is inescapable. Someone once said that monastic life is not difficult, it’s just relentless. But that’s the point. Our customs and rules work to make the days we live as monks regular and repetitious precisely so that we can recognize that the circumstances of this life are not liable to change, at least to our liking. The only change possible is within ourselves, the choices we make about how we are going to react to these circumstances, to these brothers around us. We persevere, not with clenched teeth and a stiff neck, but with hope for the coming of the light out of the darkness of winter. If we persevere in the path that Jesus laid out for us, we can slowly become kinder and more compassionate to those whom God has deliberately put into our lives. And if we allow ourselves to be purified, to be refined by the slow fire, the irritations and discomforts, the consolations and beauty, of one day after another, we may be able to say, with Simeon, “Lord, now you let your servant go in peace, your word has been fulfilled.”