Candlemas February 2, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Does fire save? Or does it destroy? If you ask the wood and the wax, they will say it destroys. If you ask the man caught in the cold or the child lost in the darkness, they’ll save it saves. Your answer, then, will probably depend on two things: what you are and where you are. It’s for this reason that Our Lord, that Scripture, that the liturgy of the Church makes such frequent use of fire, both literally and symbolically.
Take our first reading for example. The prophet Malachi is proclaiming good news, he’s trying to inspire some hope and conviction in the Israelites who were saved from exile but still don’t get why it’s important to trust in God. And what does he say? “Suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek.” God himself will show up in the very temple they see every day. Yet, he follows that with this ominous question: “who will endure the day of his coming?… He is like refiner’s fire.” Is that encouraging? Or frightening? Yes, God is coming, but he’s going to… melt me like gold in a furnace? To burn me?
Depends on what you are and where you are. If you’re gold and silver still comfortably buried in dirt and rock, then it’s terrifying. If you’re the earrings, the bracelets, the adornments of a beautiful building made from pure gold and silver… ah, well that’s great news! And Malachi says as much. This God-Fire will refine “them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD.” Not destruction, but transformation. Not torture, but preparation to please God.
Again and again scripture uses this image of fire both terrifying and encouraging. St. Paul compares our souls to buildings tested by fire, that if we build with gold & silver, we’ll be fine, but straw and wood? Not so great. (1 Cor 3:10-17) Jesus sounds like a deranged pyromaniac saying he came to set the earth on fire and wishes it were already blazing (Lk 12:49). John the Baptist promised a baptism by fire and the Apostles receive the Holy Spirit in tongues of flame.
Sometimes the symbolism is peeled away and we get a more… direct explanation. Like the second reading from Hebrews, which just outright calls it suffering. “Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Jesus was “refined” by the “fire” that is suffering, which then enabled him to help those who are still suffering.
Wise followers can see this. It’s why Simeon, in the midst of literally crying out with joy over God’s goodness, turns to a brand new mother to tell her “you yourself a sword will pierce.” It’s why he prophesies that although Jesus will cause many to “rise,” he’ll also cause many to “fall” and be a “sign that will be contradicted.”
To speak plainly, all this means that Jesus saves us through suffering, both his and ours. It means that the way God shows his love to us is through suffering. And this is why so many reject God. They interpret suffering as a sign of rejection. They see his silence in the face of seemingly undeserved evil as proof that he does not care.
Sadly, because of Original Sin, there is no other way to convert our weakness into strength, to convert fallen human beings into saints. As fire can turn wax into life, so suffering and death can turn us into immortal sons and daughters of God. Not because God is a masochist. Not because he’s mean or cruel. He does it for the same reason that fire consumes the wax of a candle. We might think fire destroys wax, but it actually transforms it. There’s no other way to convert wax into life. A candle burning produces CO2 and water vapor. It becomes two things that give life to plants while simultaneously producing the heat and light human beings so often need to live.
It’s not that it’s all suffering, that we should expect only to be hurt. It doesn’t even have to be mostly pain. But, like fire, the love of God is what it is. It cannot help but do what it does, which is to give off light, heat, and life by burning, purifying, and transforming whatever it touches. While that purification and transformation will have to feel like suffering at least sometimes, it can also be experienced as joy. In fact, joy is the real result of God’s love. Our ability to experience it that way, however, depends on what we are and where we are.
So, what are you? And where are you? All of us are partly wax – soft, easily molded by the world, not much use if left unlit. All of us are this fireplace of a fallen world: so often stuck in sin, caught up in selfishness. But if we’re willing to suffer through conversion and penance, to suffer through inexplicable trials with only the trust that God is in control, it can transform that wax in us… if we’re willing to step out of the fireplace of worldly glamour and pride and selfishness… Well then maybe we’ll start to want the fire, to want the purification at least a little… to start to see past the pain and into the light of truth, the warmth of love, the carbon dioxide of self-gift, and the water of mercy.
You are suffering, I know. So am I. We all are, some more than others. When that suffering causes you to doubt, when your heart threatens to harden and your mind wants to be cynical, look to the candle of Jesus Christ. Counter the lie that suffering equals God’s rejection with the light of the truth that God suffers with you. Dispel the cold thoughts of meaninglessness with the warmth of knowing that your very existence is proof God loves you because things can only exist if he loves them. Exhale that temptation to let suffering be an excuse for selfishness, breathe it out knowing that channeling our pain into compassion for others actually makes the pain easier to bear. Return often to the fount of God’s mercy to wash away the sins that threaten to make your suffering permanent.
You are not alone and your suffering is not pointless. By God’s grace, you are the temple to which God comes and, if you let it, that same grace can turn your suffering into fire, your wax into life, your darkness into a light of revelation – the revelation that love really does win in the end.