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It was Friday, the sun was setting over Wellington and we were in sacred time at the dinner table. There had been other Sabbath meals with Jewish friends but on this occasion our hosts guided us, step by step, through the deeper meanings of their rituals and their separate male and female roles.
The husband explained that only a woman can bring in the Sabbath because she has the lateral gifts of relationship needed to light the candles. She reaches out to God around her, through her heart. The man’s gift is to reach upwards to God, a vertical movement through the head. The role of each complemented the other, he said, and thus man and woman learned from each other.
As the wife prepared to light two white candles in their fine silver candlesticks, she told us that one candle represented the male aspect of God and the other, the female. The candles were not placed close together but with a little space in between.
She said that when they were lit, she would cover her eyes and direct her prayers for her family and the world, to this space between the candles where the male and female light mingled. This space represented the wholeness of God.
Many times since, I have taken those images to Mass. As the candles on the altar are lit, prayers of gratitude have gone out to the place between them, where the light meets and mingles.
Sometimes the prayer is a reflection on the ways the two movements, male and female, are held in our Catholic Faith. We have head and heart, structure and mystery, container and contents – inseparable and yet paradoxically separate and equal.
Sometimes the prayer dwells on how men and woman are gift to each other, bringing each other to a fullness of humanity – which is what spirituality is all about. We see this in marriage, of course, but the gifting is also in the workplace. It is in the Church. It is everywhere.
I had a deeply prayerful friend, a retired obstetrician, who often talked about all he’s been taught by the motherly wisdom of women. While I appreciate that this has been an important part of his formation, it is not a part of mine. But it does make me realise that most of the significant teachers on my pilgrimage, have been men.
Often, the prayer of the candles is without any kind of thought process. It simply rests with Jesus and Mary.
Frequently, my mind goes back to that Friday evening, many years ago, when our Jewish friends talked about the male and female roles and the vertical and horizontal movements of prayer.
I’m aware that in our tradition, when the male and female attributes, the vertical and horizontal, are placed together, we have the perfect symbol of wholeness – the cross of the risen Christ.
- Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.
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