Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Lo, I am sending my messenger

to prepare the way before me;
And suddenly there will come to the temple
the Lord whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
But who will endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, or Candlemas is the last Christmas ceremony, arriving forty days after the holiday. Given our frenzied pace and short attention span, that seems like several years ago.  Traditionally the Catholic Church blesses a year’s supply of candles on this day, both the sanctuary lamps and the altar candles. On the morrow, we’ll use some of them to bless throats on the feast of Saint Blaise.

Forty days after Christmas, it is good to reflect for a few minutes on this past Yuletide. That was before the shooting in Tucson, after the sudden spate of legislation out of the lame-duck Congress, before the suicide bombing in Russia, before the massive demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt, in the middle of a winter that seems colder than usual. What was special about Christmas 2010 for you?

Recently, as I read the Office of Readings last Saturday, and the passage from Deuteronomy, I notice the words, “by night.”

Observe the month of Abib by keeping the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. (16:1) 

The expression caught my eye because Joseph took the child and his mother by night and went to Egypt. The phrase recalls the urgency and panic of the Hebrew escape from Egypt, and the terrible irony that the Child was taken back to Egypt when Jerusalem threatened to destroy him.

On this feast of the Purification we bless candles and celebrate the light that shines in darkness – and the darkness cannot overcome it.  We are seeing already the return of the light. The days are longer and the nights shorter since the solstice.

It is “our sure and certain faith” that God’s loving plan is being worked out for us as we watch. There are so many excuses for pessimism -- not least is the knowledge of darkness in our own hearts -- but we simply cannot afford to indulge them. As we enter February, which often seems the longest month, we carry the light of Christ within us and shine in the darkness around us.