Candlemas, celebrated forty days after Christmas, is traditionally the official end of Christmastide, marking the end of the liturgical seasons of Christmas and Epiphany. The season of Epiphany, although still observed in the Extraordinary Form (Latin Rite calendar), is no longer a liturgical season in the Ordinary Rite. That doesn’t mean it’s any less important, however. The Feast of the Purification of Mary is the oldest Marian feast day, dating to at least the fifth century. It also marks the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, and the encounter with, and prophecies of, Simeon and Anna (see
Luke 2:22-40).
Candlemas deserves far more attention than it receives in a typical US parish, so indulge me for a moment. It is a pivotal day in the year and in salvation history. The Holy Family fulfills the obligations of the old law that arose from Jesus’ birth, through the sacrifice of turtledoves for Mary’s ritual purification and the consecration of Jesus, as a first-born male, to God.
The feast also commemorates the third and final infancy epiphany since Jesus’ birth—the first to the poor shepherds, the second to the three Gentile kings (or Magi or Wise Men), and the third to the elderly, righteous Israelites Simeon and Anna. It will be thirty years before the next epiphany, when Jesus approaches his cousin John to be baptized in the Jordan (now remembered on the first Sunday following Epiphany and in the first Luminous Mystery of the Rosary).
