'Commonly called': on celebrating the Purification of St Mary the Virgin

Some Churches keep four Holy-daies in memory of the blessed Virgin, namely, The Annunciation, the Assumption, the Nativity, and Purification. Our Church keeps only the Purification and Annunciation which are common to her and our Blessed Lord - Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer.

In contemporary Anglican liturgies the feast is unfailingly titled as 'The Presentation of Christ'.  In the Prayer Book tradition, this title is immediately followed by 'commonly called the Purification of St Mary the Virgin'.  In the Calendar of the Prayer Book tradition the latter title is used to describe the feast, and it is also the title used on the pages in which the collect, epistle and gospel are to be found.

The removal of this second title for the feast was urged by those low church evangelicals who, in the 19th century, sought revision of the BCP.  Thus we read in such a document from 1861:

In the Calendar for "Purification of Virgin Mary" insert "Presentation of Christ," and in the title before the Col1ects omit "commonly called the Purification of the Virgin Mary."

We can assume here a prejudice against regarding the feast as having a distinctly Marian theme.  When the Church of Ireland came to revise its BCP after disestablishment, such calls were rejected, with the 1878 Irish BCP retaining all the references in Calendar and Table of Lessons to the 'Purification of BVM', and similarly retaining the 1662 title for the collect, epistle and gospel.

With contemporary liturgical revision, however, the low church calls to omit the traditional Marian title for the feast have been answered.  The Blessed Virgin Mary has disappeared from contemporary Anglican calendars and titles for the feast. This impoverishes the celebration of the feast in two particular ways.

Firstly, the title 'The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary' witnesses to the flesh-and-blood reality of the Incarnation.  Saint Luke carefully carefully begins his account of the Presentation with reference to the Blessed Virgin and the demands of the levitical law:

And when the days of her purification according to the Law of Moses were accomplished ... (Luke 2:22).

This reference to Leviticus 12 powerfully points to the fullness of the Incarnation, its utter physicality: 'menstruation', 'blood', 'flow of blood'.  The only begotten Word, consubstantial with the Father, was born of a woman, of this Woman's flesh and blood.  Our contemporary squeamishness about this so sanitises Saint Luke's account that we lose the force of his reference to flesh-and-blood birth, to the Blessed Virgin Mary giving real, physical birth to God-in-flesh-and-blood.

When we remove reference to the feast as 'The Purification of St Mary the Virgin', we hide from the bloody, messy reality of this birth, from the utter reality which gives rise to the Church's praise: thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.  By removing the title of 'The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary', it is as if we do abhor the physical reality of her womb.

Secondly, as Sparrow notes, the Prayer Book tradition has two Marian feasts, Purification and Annunciation.  The Marian dimension to both feasts has a profound significance.  On the Purification we look back to the celebration of the Lord's Nativity at Christmas and the Epiphany.  The Marian emphasis to the feast witnesses, as we have seen, to the fullness, the reality of the Incarnation.  The Gospel reading for the feast also points us forward to the Passion, and does so through Simeon's prophecy regarding the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin:

a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.

This Mother will bitterly grieve.  Note too the very physical imagery: "a sword shall pierce".  Her grief will witness to the physical reality of the Lord's Passion.

Similarly with the feast of 'The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary' (again, a Marian emphasis displaced by contemporary liturgical revision).  Here the Marian dimension calls us to behold the physical reality of what we will soon thereafter celebrate, the Passion and Resurrection.  No Gnostic myths, no archetypes, no metaphors, but flesh-and-blood reality, for He is Son of Mary, born of this Woman.

When Sparrow describes the Purification and Annunciation as "common to her and our Blessed Lord", we grasp the significance of this Marian dimension.  'Common', for this - in Nativity and Passion - is her flesh and blood, fruit of her womb.

This saving reality is obscured when we, embarrassed by the physical, fleshly references, remove from the feast the title of 'The Purification of the Saint Mary the Virgin', when we remove from a feast proclaiming the Incarnation reference to the Woman who gave flesh and blood to the Eternal Word of the Father.  Rather than being an odd, socially embarrassing title for the feast, 'The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin' draws us to behold the full, saving reality of the Incarnation.

There is something rather glorious in the Prayer Book's use of 'commonly called' regarding this title.  Common indeed.  Common to us all.  Common birth. Common flesh and blood.

(The illustration is from Marianne Stokes, 'Madonna and Child with Symbols', c.1905.)