I am sure that part of your bed-time reading is the Book of Leviticus, mainly because its list of laws and practices to be observed by the people of God is guaranteed to put you to sleep.  Should you have ever persevered to Chapter 12 you will know that a Jewish woman who gave birth to a male child had a particular observance to make.  Under Jewish Law, the birth of a Son was marked by his being presented in the Temple, 40 days after his birth.  That is what St. Luke is referring to in the opening words of today’s Gospel when Mary & Joseph obeyed this law and went to the Temple.  There, they were greeted by old Simeon, who took the child Jesus into his arms and praised God.  The words he used are familiar to us as the Nunc Dimittis, which we say or sing at Evensong.

A phrase in the Nunc Dimittis – that Christ was a 'light to lighten the Gentiles' – gave rise to the popular name for today’s feast – Candlemass – because from about 450AD it became the custom to light candles during the Liturgy.  Candles have become increasingly important, not only in Church services but as an act of prayer and it is now much more common for churches to have, as we have, voted candle stands.

It is also something that is done on other significant occasions and those who watched the Holocaust Commemorations on television last Thursday will know that at both Auschwitz and in Westminster Hall – the climax was the lighting of memorial candles. It was particularly moving to see the Heads of State or their representatives step forward in the snow of Auschwitz and place candles on the commemorative stones.

There may not seem to be an obvious connection between what happened last Thursday and what happened long ago in the Temple but it did occur to me that had Jesus been born a Jew , not in Bethlehem but in Berlin and in the 1930’s, it would have been likely that, instead of being blessed by Simeon he would have been incinerated by Dr. Mengele.

A different connection is provided by Simeon in his prophecy that Jesus was destined for the falling and rising of many and a sign that would be opposed – a reminder that Christmas is linked to Holy Week and Christ’s suffering but perhaps, more than this, it was the chilling words to Mary which provides the direct connection between Candlemass and the Holocaust – “A sword will pierce your own soul too.”

It is not easy to make sense of something so senseless as the Holocaust though many have tried.  We are forced into using words like Barbaric, Inhuman, Total evil; hell on earth. But these words will not do to describe what was, in the words of Auschwitz survivor and former French Health Minister, Simon Weil, “a place where no words can tell the truth about what happened.”  We are reduced to incredulous silence.

A sword piercing souls is an accurate description of what happened to those who were shipped to the death camps in cattle trucks.  Ulrich Simon, former Professor of Christian Literature at King’s College London, whose parents were gassed in Auschwitz described, chillingly what happened then, in his book A Theology of Auschwitz:

“Men and women were separated, made to strip naked so as to prepare for a bath as if in the interest of hygiene, escorted to the gas chambers…into which the victims were pressed until there was no capacity for any more. They were pressed so tight that no one could fall down even at the moment of death…as might be expected, some victims died sooner than others."  

And so Professor Simon goes on to describe an agony which lasted from 5 to 20 minutes; of those trying to fight their way out and others accepting calmly the inevitability of death; of the stripping of gold from teeth and hair from heads before the bodies were thrown into crematoria by other Jews detailed for this work – to be reduced to a mass of ashes which was then used for agricultural fertiliser.  Swords piercing hearts.

There is a connection between Jesus and his fellow Jews of Auschwitz and it is provided by Calvary.  Like him they were arrested. Like him they were stripped of all dignity. His mock trial was no better than their lack of trial. The railroad to Auschwitz was their Via Dolorosa – the way to Calvary. Like him they were beaten, starved, treated as inhuman.  And they died as He died outside the city – beyond the gaze of the world.

Auschwitz , like Calvary became a place of  oblivion but like Calvary it has refused to be that – as Thursday’s ceremonies proved – it is a place of memory and a symbol in its own way – a reminder that  what it stands for – the utter depths of human depravity – is also a place of hope.

The world leaders gathering there uttered fine words but it was not their rhetoric which touched hearts – it was the ordinary people with their extraordinary memories – the survivors who came to place their hearts close to the heart of that camp and hear the beating hearts of the dead still speaking to the living – still offering a message to our world of the 21st century.

Unlike Calvary, perhaps, Auschwitz has not got a message of Resurrection but it is through our own understanding of Resurrection and the Passion which precedes it  which may offer an interpretation.  It is not inconceivable that had those who died been Christian, they would now be saints – because they showed a witness and a courage which has all the hallmarks of Martyrdom.  Where they touch Calvary most significantly is in something rooted deep in both Jewish and Christian tradition.  It is to be seen most graphically in the story of the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22.

Abraham obeys the will of God and takes his Son to Mount Moriah and is there prepared to sacrifice him as a test of faith. Behind the event is the Jewish understanding of the Scapegoat – the sacrifice made to assuage guilt. In Jewish tradition this is done by symbolically and penitentially loading a goat or a sheep with the sins of the people and sending it over the precipice or releasing it to wander in the wilderness.  There is an understanding that Jesus, by taking to himself the sins of humanity and crucifying them on the Cross was just such a scapegoat – and the imagery of the Lamb who was slain, who ransomed us by his blood, and was an atonement for human wrong – reinforces this.  The connection with those who perished in the Holocaust is that they too could be seen as scapegoats.

The Jews, the Gypsies, the Gay people, the mental and physically handicapped became symbols of all that Nazi Germany saw as barriers to becoming a master race. They were also scapegoats for all that the German people saw as flaws not only in their own society but in their own characters. It was as if, by expunging the different and, to their mind, the flawed, they were ridding themselves of deep-seated flaws in their own quest for purity.

The victims became, therefore, symbols of all that the German nation feared and because fear usually breeds hate – they became objects of loathing.  Passionate hatred of any group of people has a long history of turning into violence against them. Jesus, himself, became a victim of the fear and hatred of the Jewish leaders. They whipped up the crowds against him in a kind of mass-hysteria which was repeated in  Nazi Germany. It swept up all but a few who stood against it at their peril – Dietrich Bonhöffer, the Lutheran pastor and Christian martyr, was one who did. Resisting  the evil that was taking over his Nation, he became, himself a victim of it.

When a crowd is persuaded to hatred there is no stopping it and that is why so many ordinary Germans not only colluded but participated in the extermination of those who perished in the Holocaust.

But there are many lessons to be learned both from Calvary and Auschwitz.  Amongst them is that no matter what is done evil can never triumph. It holds sway for a time but is ultimately defeated not least because it is self-consuming. Those who hate are choked by their own hatred. Even more so when those they hate take up what seems like a line of least resistance.  The Jews in Auschwitz, and Jesus on the Cross seem to accept their fate, are resigned to what others do to them. There is, however, in this passivity a Divine activity – that paradox which turns a defeat into a victory, an obliteration of life into new life.

For the Christian this is clearly obvious in the Resurrection. Perhaps that is less obvious in the victims of Auschwitz but in the collective memory of the Jewish people they live on. Even more than that – there are other tangible results. For example, the nation of Israel could not exist had Auschwitz not happened. Nor could a real dialogue have opened up between Christian and Jew which has led, amongst other things, and quite importantly, to our ceasing to blame the Jews for the death of Christ. Since Auschwitz we no longer pray, as we once did on Good Friday, that God will remove the blindness from the hearts of the ‘perfidious Jews’.

Much has changed because of Auschwitz but the real lesson we have to go on learning is that much has not changed.  It is easy for us to blame the German Nation for all that happened during Hitler’s regime – to turn them also into scapegoats but we must be careful that in seeking the speck in our brother’s eye we miss the beam in our own.  Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks has reminded us that the gas chambers of Auschwitz burned because people were different in a world where there is no room for difference and this carries the implication that there is no room to be human.

Not only must we fight for the sanctity of life but we must also fight against the hate, fear and prejudice which threatens that sanctity.  And it starts not in Auschwitz but in our own hearts.  Far too many people are subjected to hatred and prejudice in our world today. Of those who died at Auschwitz, there is still anti-Semitism; prejudice against gay people;  intolerance of the gypsy way of life and misunderstanding of the disabled. Look at the way, for example, organisations are seeking to find the minimum way of complying with the new Disabled Act without actually taking this opportunity to enrich the lives of those whom  we call ‘disabled’.  The groups who died in Auschwitz are the tip of the iceberg. In our world today there are many of differing racial, religious, social and cultural backgrounds who suffer from the hatred, fear and oppression of others.

If Calvary and Auschwitz are to teach us anything, that must include creating a world where difference is not only accepted but celebrated. As Jonathan Sacks said recently,

“A Society is as large as the space it makes for the stranger. Cherish life. Fight for the rights of others.”

Or to put it another way – do not ever be the one who plunges the sword into the heart of another – be instead the one who lights the candle of hope – and so illuminate  their lives with the light of Christ’s love.