February 9, 2014
What a beautiful combination of celebrations we have today—First we have the Purification of Mary which actually is related to the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple—and somehow somewhere inside all of that is the Feast of Candlemas—or Candelaria in Spanish where we bless the candles that we will use for the year as well as candles for home use.
On this day many people—(as if to signal the end of their families Christmas season) will bring their Baby Jesus to church for a blessing. I have seen it only since coming to St. Odilo, the children rock the Baby Jesus in a crib and sing a lullaby. Then they will take their Nino home put Him away for the year.
What a beautiful combination of feasts and traditions: candles, processions, Masses, the Baby Jesus. And all of it on February Second. (You know you live in a secular country when all they can come up with on February Second is Groundhog Day—that’s about as deep as we get.)
But February Second is an incredibly auspicious day. First of all it is the end of the Christmas Season precisely because it is forty days after Jesus’ birth. And. of course, forty days after His birth, the Virgin Mary – according to Jewish custom—was to go to the temple to be purified—to be blessed by the priest.
Needless to say the sinless Virgin Mary did not need any purification—after all she was full of grace. But she submitted to the custom and to the Law as a model of parents submitting to God.
An imitation of Mary’s Purification
If you are as old as me you might remember a very common ceremony. It was called “churching”. I remember as an altar boy many times after morning Mass—mother with her baby in her arms would come into the sacristy and she would ask Father to be “churched”. Then all of us would go to one of the side altars. I would hold the Holy Water and Father in Surplice and stole would say the traditional “churching” prayers over the mother and child—beautiful prayers that begged God’s grace and protection and love; and then they were sent forth to be a good Catholic family. I just stood there and thought how nice that was. It was obvious that “churching” was the holy and healthy Christian imitation of Mary’s Purification.
Then after Mary’s ritual Purification—she and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple. This was another Jewish custom. Forty days after a baby’s birth the family would buy a lamb (or if you were poor as was the case for Joseph and Mary you bought a pair of turtledoves), and you asked the priest to offer those doves in sacrifice to God. This sacrifice was the ritual dedication of the First Born Child to the service of the Lord.
After all this the family went home and went about their lives—so that their Child might grow in wisdom and age and grace.
Hispanic people continue this tradition and a baby at either at forty days—or three years old makes their Presentacion in the temple. The same understanding pertains—this baby is now being consecrated to the service of Our Lord and His Church.
Now what is intriguing is that February Second is not just some random day in the middle of the winter. It is exactly forty days after December 25th, and also February 2nd is the exact midpoint between the first day of Winter and the First day of spring.
A Light to the Nations
That means that February Second is the first day since winter began that there is now more light in the day than darkness. All of which takes on new meaning when we remember how Simeon said that this Child was to be a “Light to the Nations.” None of this is by accident.
All the dates and astronomical settings and historical occurrences—from His Conception to His Birth to His Death to His Presentation to Mary’s Purification. It all lines up so smoothly that you cannot help but love God for the care He takes with His story. He shows us little signs here and there—and even in the calendar and in the stars—that all that we believe about God and Jesus and salvation is true.
And that is where Candlemas comes in. Candelaria reminds us as clearly as possible that Christ is the Light of the Nations. He is the light of our homes and light of our lives and light to the world.
What better way than candles to signify all that. And these are not just candles—but they are beeswax Candles. This is so that we can marvel at how even the lowly creature like the honeybee can be an instrument of God’s grace.
Since January is pretty much the coldest month—the bees in their hives are the quietest. That is the
easiest time to enter the beehives and remove the wax. The wax, of course, will then be used to make candles for church.
It is almost as if God has conspired with the weather and with the calendar and even with the Bees to help us proclaim Jesus as Light to the Nations—and all this by the fashioning of candles.
The light of the Nations is introduced by the light of the candles. The promise of Spring—is the promise of Salvation.
That is why such things as candles and holy water and beads and bells are called sacramentals. A sacramental is something fashioned out of that which is created in order to remind us of the Creator—and even bees can be sacramentals. Sacramentals are important for us. Sometimes even our lives on earth are like sacramentals. Of course it was easier in the old days when we were traditional people who still lived in the small towns and on the family farms and still made things like candles and honey and whatever else we needed for our lives. How wonderful it must have been for our ancestors—because as close as they were to the earth—to that degree were they in constant contact with heaven.
And the things that they made with their own hands—helped them understand who first gave them life.
How different for our grandparents and great grandparents—and a hundred generations before—before Modernity pulled us out of the country—off of the land which our people had tended for thousands of years— stuck us in a three story walk-up apartment, gave us a handful of cash and told us how much better off we were. In the old days we understood how everything in this world was a gift from God for our benefit; and everything in this world, when used properly—would lead us to God.
Before modernity put up walls and barriers and boundaries between us and nature and then between us and God and then between us and other people, everything fit together like a hand in a glove.
We knew that God gave us bees and babies and candles and honey. We knew that God brought us light and life and loving fathers and loving mothers to rock their loving children.
Before we became modern and cold and hard (our lives reflecting off of little hand held screens)—we knew so easily and naturally that God gave us hands to make candles and cradles and then fold them into prayer. We knew He gave us hearts to make families.
Before modernity, our people knew that God gave us feet to wander to church and voices to sing songs. Our grandparents—and not that long ago—knew from the world all around them—by the position of the stars and the popping of the flowers that God was telling us how He had given us His Son, the Divine Child.
Prayers and novenas and processions and Mass? It was all part of a day—it was all part of a year. It was all part of a life.
Is it gone?
Well maybe not altogether. We may not be able to return to the villages of our families’ youth—we may not be able to go back to some Catholic version of Little House on the Prairie.
The key is to keep to the faith and keep to the traditions and keep to the sacramentals. The key is to be able to see the Hand of God, the Finger of God, the Mind of God in all that is around us—to be convinced that history is not just random events—and that stars are not just exploding gases—and that weather is not just shifting fronts—and that even the little bees aren’t just bugs.
We will learn that it all has a part in teaching us about God’s love—and our salvation—and isn’t it something— how it all seems to come together on February Second.