Feast day: February 2
The Presentation of the Lord
Forty days after Christmas, Mary and Joseph present the infant Jesus in the Temple, where old Simeon and the prophetess Anna recognize him as the long-awaited Light.
Forty days after Christmas, the Church recalls the day when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, in keeping with the Law of Moses, which required that a firstborn son be presented and consecrated to the Lord and that the mother offer a sacrifice of purification — and, being poor, they brought the offering of the poor, a pair of turtledoves.
There they were met by two aged figures who had spent their lives in waiting. The old man Simeon, promised that he would not die before seeing the Messiah, took the child in his arms and blessed God in the words the Church sings every night at Compline — the 'Nunc Dimittis': 'Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation, a light for revelation to the Gentiles.' Then he warned Mary that a sword would pierce her own soul.
The prophetess Anna, a widow of great age who never left the Temple, came forward at the same moment and spoke of the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Israel. In the East the feast is called the 'Hypapante,' the Meeting — the moment the long expectation of the Old Covenant met its fulfillment in the arms of the old.
Because Simeon hailed the child as 'a light to the nations,' the feast became associated with light, and by the eleventh century the Church blessed candles on this day and carried them in procession — giving it its English name, 'Candlemas.' Falling forty days after the Nativity, it gently closes the long season of Christmas with a flame.
Called Candlemas because candles are blessed today — Simeon hailed the child as 'a light to the nations,' closing the Christmas season with light.
“Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.”
— The Presentation of the Lord
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/03245b.htm
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