Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
– William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Ask a lot of people which is their most un-favourite month and they will say February. It’s a short month but it seems like the long drawn out tail-end of winter. It’s either sunny-but-cold or slightly- warmer-but-grey-and-depressing. Basically, at the end of the month we are glad to see the end of poor old February, aren’t we?

But, of course, February does give us the opportunity to long for spring, a season we don’t really appreciate enough in this country. When I studied in Canada the transition from winter to summer seemed to be over in a few days. Fr James and Fr Tomy would often say how in Kerala there are no real seasons except the monsoons. Here we all look out for the first signs of the coming spring. The snowdrops peep out, the daffs start to push up, the mornings start to get a little lighter. It’s good sometimes to have to wait, to be forced to long… There’s something very spiritual about the emergence from winter into spring. No wonder St John in particular often talks of dark and light in his Gospel. So Advent made us wait for the Coming. Lent will make us wait for the Dying and Rising. Here are a few lines I found about February.

“Away in a meadow all covered with snow
The little old groundhog looks for his shadow
The clouds in the sky determine our fate
If winter will leave us all early of late.” – Don Halley

I love the idea of waiting for our shadow to return with the sun. Where has it gone for the last few months? Will it ever come back? Yes… it will be back, the sun will shine again, February will soon give way to spring…

Fr Matthew