Mary, Peter & Penance

THERE ARE three Sermons in Saint Anthony’s Festival collection for the month of February – the Purification of Our Lady (usually called nowadays the Presentation of Our Lord, or Candlemas) on February 2, the Chair of St Peter on February 22, and between them Ash Wednesday, which this year falls on February 17.





Feast of the Presentation





Anthony treated the Feast of the Presentation three times in all, on the Sunday after Christmas, in the Marian Sermons, and now in the Festival Sermons. Each time he has something new to say, a fresh take on the mystery being celebrated. Because this Feast is marked by a procession with lighted candles, and candles are made from beeswax, Anthony is moved to draw an analogy between our Blessed Lady and the humble bee. Like Saint Francis, he delighted in the natural world, and drew illustrations for his sermons from the ‘Book of Nature’ just as he did from the Book of the Scriptures.



Anthony drew most of his bee-lore from the works on Natural History that had come down from the classical world, from writers on scientific subjects such as Aristotle and Pliny. One misunderstanding that these writers passed on was that they believed the chief bee in a hive to be male rather than female, and spoke of the King Bee where we would refer to the Queen Bee. For Anthony, this King is an image of Jesus Christ.



It was known that the ordinary worker bees were ‘virginal’, that is, as we would now say, they are neuter in sex. However, for Anthony this makes the bee a good simile for the Blessed Virgin. As the bee delights in flowers, in their scent and nectar, so Mary (who came from Nazareth, a word which means ‘flower’) delights in the scent of holiness, the nectar of grace. From her own substance she created ‘a house for the King’, and Jesus Christ resembles a honeycomb, the wax of his human nature being filled with the honey of his divinity.



“Today we go in procession, carrying candles in our hands, lit from new fire.” The wax candle is another symbol of Christ – its wax is His flesh, the wick is His passion, the flame of fire is the power of His divinity. The candle also represents ourselves, the disciples of Christ. “As you represent Him today by the candle, you may carry Him in your heart. The wax stands for purity of mind, the wick for affliction of body, and the flame for the ardour of charity. He who carries it thus, represents well. Glory and honour, then, be to the virgin bee, who today offered the honeycomb to God.”





The Chair of St Peter





Anthony’s use of natural images is shown again (and this time with another most amusing misunderstanding) in the course of his sermon for the Feast of St Peter’s Chair. After his usual treatment of the Gospel of the day (Peter’s confession of Christ at Caesarea Philippi), he offers an allegorical treatment of an Old Testament passage – 2 Samuel 23:8. If you look this up in a modern Bible you will see that it refers to three of King David’s champions, but due to a mistake in the Latin translation, Anthony’s text ran, literally, “David, sitting in the chair was the wisest chief among the three: he was like the most tender little worm of the wood.” What has happened is that Hebrew proper names have been translated literally according to their meaning. More than once, though Anthony uses this passage in relation to Peter, and by implication to his successors.



Peter ‘sits in the chair’, like King David giving judgement among his people. He is ‘the wisest chief among three’, for though he began as an uneducated fisherman, he was endowed through his closeness to Jesus with heavenly wisdom, which he demonstrated here by his confession, after the resurrection by his preaching, and thirdly by his own martyrdom.



How did Peter resemble the little woodworm? The woodworm has soft flesh, but a strong bite! Peter was mild and patient in dealing with the flock of Christ, but had a fierce bite when defending them against those who would undermine their faith! Anthony applies these words also to the bishops of his own day, but finds some of them sadly lacking. “He sits in the chair of ecclesiastical dignity, and would that he were wisest!” “But alas! Nowadays we see uncleanness in life, blindness in knowledge, and dumbness in eloquence.” David was commended for his wisdom, humility and fortitude. “Such should be the prelate who wants to rule the people committed to him well.” Anthony himself, mild and gentle with the poor and humble, had a sharp bite for those higher up the scale who disgraced their position.





Ash Wednesday





We shall soon be in Lent again. Anthony offers a brief but pithy sermon on prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and then in his Old Testament analogy presents Samuel, going the rounds of Israel judging, as a type of the penitent who should go round his own conscience, examining his conduct. He also presents Gideon, in the Book of Judges, whose troops attacked the Midianites with lamps hidden under earthenware pots. When the signal was given, they broke the pots, revealed the light, and put the Midianites to flight. We ‘break’ the earthenware pots of our lower nature by acts of self-denial, to reveal the inner light of Christ. There is an old Lenten hymn which uses the same imagery:



Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground, how the troops of Midian prowl and



prowl around?... Christian, never tremble; never be downcast; smite them by the virtue of



the Lenten fast.



May we all have a good Lent, following Christ in the footsteps of Mary and Peter.