A Prayer Book February

The Primaveral Season begins around Candlemas.  The increasing day is now sensibly longer, and the lighter evenings begin to be remarked by the absence of candles till near six o'clock - Thomas Furly Forster, 1827, quoted in Winter: An anthology for the changing seasons, edited by Melissa Harrison.

The coming of early Spring in February is caught up in the calendar of the Prayer Book tradition, with the experience of the change of season drawn into the preparation for the Church's springtime.

What are the characteristics of a Prayer Book February?

Feast of the Purification of St Mary the Virgin

February begins with Candlemas.  The feast both looks back to Christmas and forward to the Passion.  This liminal quality is echoed in the changing of the seasons in February, as Winter gives way to Spring.  The Gospel reading for the feast gathers up this experience of the seasons, and orders it towards the mysteries of Incarnation and Passion, as our gaze moves from the gentle light of Christmas to the scorching sorrow of the Passion.

Sundays after the Epiphany

But this transition, as with Winter giving way to Spring, is not sudden.  And so even after Candlemas, the Sundays after the Epiphany linger.  The Gospel readings for the Fourth and Fifth Sundays after the Epiphany make no sudden shift to the Paschal Mystery.  They do, however, hint at what is to come.  On the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, we behold the Lord confronting the destructive forces of evil.  On the Fifth Sunday, we hear of the time when the tares sown by the enemy are removed and burnt in judgement.  We are being prepared for coming time when will beold the Passion of the Lord, in which Jesus "having spoiled principalities and powers ... made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Colossians 2:15).

The Gesima Sundays

Lent, of course, is the old English word for 'Spring'.  Spring's arrival in February can be hesitant.  But we can feel the natural world's preparations.

Every year, in the third or fourth week of February, there is a day, or, more usually, a run of days, wen one can say for sure that the light is back.  Some juncture has been reached ... - Kathleen Jamie, 2012, quoted in Harrison.

With the Gesima Sundays in February, we are similarly prepared for Lent.  It is difficut not to see the removal of the Gesima Sundays by the liturgical reform in the Anglican and Roman traditions as being related to a weakening of Lenten observance.  If we do not need to be prepared for the days of Lent, can they really be challenging days of prayer and fasting?  If we can enter into them without a 'limbering up', is the call to fasting and abstinence to be taken seriously?

As Sparrow states of these Sundays:

This and the two next Sundayes and weeks were appointed as preparatives to the Lenten Fast, that when it came, it might be the more strictly and religiously observed.

With the Gesima Sundays, as with the natural world during these weeks, "some juncture has been reached".  We are to prepare for the demands of a new season, tilling the ground of body, heart, and soul in preparation for Lenten abstinence. In the words of the epistle for Septuagesima, "So run, that ye may obtain".

St Matthias's Day

Falling in late February, often - as this year - in the midst of the Gesima Sundays, St Matthias's Day also orients us towards the penitence of Lent.  The feast is a sobering reminder of the reality of sin in the Church's life, with the collect referring to "the traitor Judas" and "false Apostles".  Alongside this, however, we behold grace renewing and sustaining the Church's life, ensuring that are common life in the Church is rightly "ordered and guided".  The closing words of the Gospel for this feast day also bring encouragement as the disciplines of Lent draw close:

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Black Letter Days

One of February's Black Letter Days obviously stands out: Valentine, bishop and martyr. Quite why the Church would be embarrassed by this commemoration is puzzling.  The embarrassment is obvious.  So much so, in fact, that the Common Worship calendar - in common with Rome - commemorates Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius on 14th February, on the very days when the culture is speaking loudly about Saint Valentine. 

The fact that that the culture has been doing so since the Middle Ages is testimony to the day and its festivities being rooted in a Christian vision andin  the Church's blessing of romantic love.  However, by studiously avoiding reference to Saint Valentine, the contemporary Church gives the rather unfortunate impression that it is embarrassed by the gift of romantic love.

The virtue of the Black Letter Days is that they require no liturgical commemoration but yet enable the Church to mark cultural commemorations and celebrations.  Celebrating and blessing romantic love, the Church should say on 14th February, with John Donne, "Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is".

Turning towards Spring

Soon the thaw will come - Claire Leighton, 'The Farmer's Year', 1933, quoted in Harrison.

For this we are prepared by a Prayer Book February: for that yearly thaw of hardened hearts that is Lent.  A Prayer Book February turns us towards the Church's springtime.

(The second illustration is a watercolour by Eric Ravilious, 'Wiltshire Landscape', 1937.)