Altar candles

When we look at candles, we may see a symbol of prayer, of inspiration, of hope. But we may overlook that also implicit in our gaze is an experience of time, a sanctification of time, often in specifically ordered increments. Inspired by this past week’s Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, this monthly liturgy column will explore the place of candles in our liturgical life. More precisely, rather than the place, we look at the time. As this year’s liturgy series, entitled “Tempus per Annum,” has focused on the temporal, a fresh look at candles may well examine how they are defined by time. One well-known temporally-weighted lighting is the miracle of the oil celebrated at Hanukkah, found in the Babylonian Talmud. Ancient Israel would have used oil lamps rather than candles. In the miracle, oil that should rightly last a day miraculously endures for an entire eight-day celebration. While the biblical account of these events was relegated by Judaism to its apocrypha, the Catholic bible retains some of this history in Maccabees: “...they burned incense on the altar and lighted the lamps on the lampstand, and these illuminated the temple... For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered burnt offerings and sacrifices of deliverance and praise. (1 Maccabees 4: 50, 56).

While oil lamps are still permitted for the tabernacle candle, we have since ancient days moved to the use of the wax candles. The Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of the “mystical” sense of candles: “The pure wax extracted by bees from flowers symbolizes the pure flesh of Christ received from His Virgin Mother, the wick signifies the soul of Christ, and the flame represents His divinity” (“Altar Candles”). The material of candles also imposes upon them an impermanence, a fragility, a mortality: many of our liturgical candles carry a time-stamp. This temporality, already a fundamental aspect of human existence, carries over into our understanding of the candles themselves, and their meaning in our liturgy. From among the array of meanings the lighting of a candle may produce for the faithful, this reflection will turn in particular to those linked to the experience of time.