Joni Mitchell begins her beautiful song “Shadows and Light” with these words. “Every picture has its shadows and it has some source of light, blindness, blindness and sight”

 Candles create pools of light but, just as importantly, they create ever-changing shadows, the edge of the pool where you are aware of other things but are not distracted by them. The intensity of the candle-light is thus enhanced and that which it is lighting, emphasised.

 Sometimes, when the flame is lit, it burns strong and steady, without movement or hesitancy, holding its shape, strong round the short, blackened wick. At other times, the flame bounces and jumps round its seat, caught by a draught, dancing and vibrant, now one way, now the other.

 Some candles are lit to be deliberately left at the foot of a statue in church, in front of a picture or at some other place of significant remembrance. How many times after an accident or major event have we seen on television people bending low over a gathering of candles and flowers. The act of lighting the candle and placing it down, the prayer that goes with it are left as a token, an illumination for others to see, an image to be taken forward from that action of faith. They turn in their darkness yet leave the token of hurt faith behind. “A candle flame, intense, moving, wavering, aspiring, is both a longing to be one with God and a glimpse of the light and fire that is God himself”. In our loneliness and sorrow we light a flame, a small whisper of light in a cold wind.

 Sometimes, we come across a large number of candles of different shapes and sizes, lit and placed by many people, a true blaze of light, not as an image of sorrow, but one of joy and shared aspiration.  Many of the pictures that we see of the community at prayer in Taize offer such an image, a large gathering of people in prayer, facing a wall of light. We mark the passing of the days of Advent by lighting the candles of an Advent wreath and we continue in family celebrations, particularly with children, to celebrate birthdays with candles on a cake.  At other times, the single, solitary candle takes on a focal meaning that demands singular attention. It might later become the source of light to other candles, such as is the Paschal candle when it is lit at the Easter Vigil, a starting point of new life in the Risen Lord, lit at Easter and remaining ever present during the days of Paschal time. “The love we hold and that holds us-may it consume silently and gently the substance of our being in time, so that we may one day, beyond days, become pure flame in Christ”. The very nature of candle light is that it is self-consuming. The act of burning a wick set in a candle is time-limited. Fuelled by the wax and so diminishing with each passing hour that the candle remains alight until the point comes when there is no longer enough wax to sustain the wick, it then collapses and extinguishes itself. Slowly the remaining liquid wax sets back to its hard form and the life of the candle is complete. The flame is gone.

 At the celebration of Baptism at times other than Easter, the Paschal Candle is again lit. A single point of light, a sign shared with others and spread beyond its source, that candle flame becomes synonymous with the person to whom it is offered and whose responsibility it is to carry it.  “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.  Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with a divine wind sweeping over the waters. God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good and God divided light from darkness.”

 The candle flame is a light of silence, no buzz or hum that is so often associated with strip lighting, just a lit silence and a changing pattern between shadow and light. For that very reason, in the depths of night, a candle flame can become a still point in a turning world when prayer is difficult and sometimes impossible.

 The entry into a darkened church of the single light of the paschal candle and the intonation of “The light of Christ” as that light is shared with those in the pews, the gradual illumination with a myriad of flickering lights growing as we begin the Easter Vigil, is a clear reminder of our responsibility. Every blessing this Easter.

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