Happy Candlemas! There is little indication in our ordinary everyday life today that on February 2 we celebrate an ancient feast of the churches of both East and West that once played an important role among our rural population: our Lady’s Feast of Candlemas. It is a feast in which many historical currents converge so that it glows in many different colors. Its immediate occasion is the remembrance that, on the fortieth day after his birth, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem in order to offer there the prescribed sacrifice of purification. From the scene as depicted by Luke, the liturgy has selected one episode in particular: the meeting between the Child Jesus and the aged Simeon—the feast is consequently known in the Greek church by the name Hypapanti: meeting. In this meeting between the Child and the old man, the Church depicts the encounter between the disintegrating heathen world and the new beginning in Christ, between the waning of Old Testament time and the new time of the Church of the Gentiles. What the Church is underscoring here is more than the ceaseless alternation of dying and becoming, more than the consoling fact that a new generation with new ideas and new hopes always succeeds the old one. Were that all that was being commemorated here, then the Child would have offered no hope for Simeon, but only for himself. But it is more than that; it is hope for everyone, because it is a hope that extends beyond death. With this thought, we come to the second point the liturgy emphasizes on this day. It begins with the word of Simeon, who calls the Child “a light of revelation to the Gentiles”. As a result of this word, the day has been made a feast of lights. The warm light of the candles appeals to the senses as a symbol of the greater light that emanates for all times from the person of Jesus. From: Ratzinger, Joseph; Bavarian radio broadcast, February 2, 1980
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 12:29:38 +0000
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