February 2: A Feast of Manifestation, Purification, and Candles
February 2 has a rich and complex history, so it’s worth taking some time to look at the multiple events that the Catholic Church has celebrated on this date over the millennia.
The first reason February 2 is significant is because it falls forty days after Christmas. As I wrote in another Substack post, The New Math of Christmas, the Christmas season was traditionally celebrated for a total of forty days–until 1969. Liturgical scholar Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote in 1868, a century before that, “We apply the name of Christmas to the 40 days which begin with the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2.
After the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI set the date for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord to be the first Sunday after January 6 or, “if in a particular country the Epiphany is celebrated on 7 or 8 January, on the following Monday.”
As a result, for those who follow the new calendar, the total number of days of the Christmas season varies, and the number is always going to be much shorter than forty days. For example, during this liturgical year 2023/2024, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord fell on the Monday after Epiphany, January 8, so the 2023/2024 Christmas season according to the new calendar was only fifteen days long.
History of the Feast of the Forty Days
We have an eye-witness account of the long history of the celebration of the forty days after Christ’s birth. The account came from the 4th century A.D., before the Church had even given the feast a name. A nun named Egeria, who came from what is now Spain, wrote in Latin to her religious sisters about what she saw and did during her three-year pilgrimage to the Holy Land and other religious sites from 381 to 384. (Egeria’s travels are another bit of the evidence I keep running across that reminds me about the surprising amount of traveling people did in the ancient world, some of it by independent women like Egeria, not to mention the fictional Alison, the Wife of Bath, in the fourteenth century Canterbury Tales, who also made many pilgrimages.)
In what is the oldest surviving record of a Catholic pilgrimage, Egeria described a Mass in honor of the feast of the forty days after Christ’s birth, which she observed in Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on February 14. The Church celebrated the feast on February 14 in those days because the birth of Our Lord was observed, along with Epiphany, on January 6 at that time. When the celebration of Christmas was later moved to December 25, the date of the feast of the forty days was naturally moved back also, to February 2, forty days after the Feast of the Nativity.
“All the priests, and after them the bishop, preach, always taking for their subject that part of the Gospel where Joseph and Mary brought the Lord into the Temple on the fortieth day, and Symeon and Anna the prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, saw him, treating of the words which they spake when they saw the Lord, and of that offering which his parents made. And when everything that is customary has been done in order, the sacrament is celebrated, and the dismissal takes place.”—From “Egeria’s Description of the Liturgical Year in Jerusalem: Egeria and The Fourth Century Liturgy of Jerusalem.” Based on the translation reproduced in Louis Duchesme’s Christian Worship (London, 1923).
The “Meeting of Our Lord,” “Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Presentation of the Lord”
At some point, the forty days feast acquired the name “The Meeting of Our Lord,” and it is still called by that name by at least one Eastern church. Whom did the Lord meet at that meeting? Even though He was only a baby, He was recognized by two very old people, a prophet named Simeon and a prophetess named Anna, who each separately had been praying and waiting for the long-promised Messiah, the Christ of God. In His encounter with Simeon and Anna who recognized who He was, the Lord also symbolically met and was recognized as the Christ by His people, Israel.
Some time before the eighth century, the date of February 2 began to be celebrated as a Marian Feast, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is on the 1962 liturgical calendar.
Jewish law said that a woman was ritually unclean for forty days after the birth of a boy and eighty days after a girl. Afterward, a mother had to make a sacrifice and be purified.
Of course, Mary did not need to be purified. She who was immaculately conceived was not impure herself, and she could not possibly have been made unclean by giving birth to the Holy One of Israel. The Church teaches that Mary observed the Law in spite of the fact that she was above it, from humility, as an example of obedience, and so as not to cause scandal. Jesus fulfilled the Law and stood above the Law as God, and yet He humbly submitted to the law requiring males to be circumcised.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains Mary’s purification in this way:
As the fullness of grace flowed from Christ on to his Mother, so it was becoming that the Mother should be like her Son in humility: for “God giveth grace to the humble,” as is written James 4:6. (Summa Theologiae III:37:4).
Christ also humbly submitted to Baptism even though He did not need to be cleansed of Original Sin.
Saint Ambrose said, “Our Lord was baptized because He wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters.”
At the same time He instituted the Sacrament of Baptism.
The thought of a woman being labeled unclean after having a child is distasteful to modern sensibilities, and the fact that a woman had twice as long a time of ritual uncleanness when she bore a girl child as she did with a boy child could be a reason for resentment in women of our era. Besides being observed as the Purification of Our Lady, February 2 is currently observed as the Presentation of the Lord in the revised 1969 calendar of the Roman rite. Maybe that distaste for the idea is behind the change of the feast’s title.
I am inclined to think there are always positive explanations for these kinds of practices that sound unfair or unreasonable to the modern ear. Whether the child was a boy or a girl, I can imagine that the time of ritual uncleanness offered a new mother precious time to be relieved of all other duties to be free to devote herself totally to her newborn, and so the birth of a girl baby would give a mother even more time to rest.
What Do Candles Have to Do with It?
Whatever name you observe it under, Purification or Presentation, February 2 is commonly known as Candlemas, from the custom of blessing beeswax candles on this day for use in the church and in homes. The association of this feast with candles and light came about because in the Gospel of the day, Simeon speaks of the infant Jesus as the “light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32).
On Candlemas, the prayers said by the priest as he blesses the candles with holy water and incense include the symbols of fire and light as metaphors for our faith and for Christ Himself. The choir sings the Nunc Dimittis or Canticle of Simeon with the antiphon “Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel” (“Light to the revelation of the gentiles and the glory of your people Israel”) after each verse. A solemn procession may be made by the clergy and the faithful carrying candles.
Below: Photos from the blessing of candles and procession on Candlemas 2013 at St. Margaret Mary Church in Oakland, CA, with Canon Olivier Meney, Episcopal Delegate for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite
When DOES the Christmas Season End?
“When does the Christmas season end?” is a question with a complicated answer, as I mentioned earlier. In the secular world, Christmas Day is the end of the commercial “Holiday” celebration, but for Catholics it is only the beginning.
Some Traditional Catholics, like me, leave their Christmas decorations up until Candlemas. The poet Robert Herrick would have approved; this poem of his describes the taking down of the Christmas greenery on Candlemas Eve:
“Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;“Down with the holly, ivy, all,
“Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674), “Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve”
Differences of opinion about when Christmas ends are nothing new. For example, here is a poem from colonial Williamsburg:
“When New Year’s Day is past and gone;
Christmas is with some people done;
But further some will it extend,
And at Twelfth Day their Christmas end.
Some people stretch it further yet,
At Candlemas they finish it.
The gentry carry it further still
And finish it just when they will;
They drink good wine and eat good cheer
And keep their Christmas all the year.”
The gentry in the poem were missing the point: by drinking and eating as if it were Christmas all year, they weren’t celebrating the feast of Christmas any more, just gormandizing. Just like we moderns do . . . But at least none of the people in the poem would be likely to take the Christmas tree down and throw it out the day after Christmas. They’d hold out at least until January 2, “When New Year’s Day is past and gone.”
Candlemas: Time to put all the Christmas stuff away until next December 25
Luke 2:22-40 Explains It All to Us
We can find all of the doctrines about this unique feast of both Christ and the Blessed Virgin in the Gospel of Luke 2:22-40, which is read that day.
The law required the first-born son to be presented to the Lord and called holy, and so Mary and Joseph brought Christ the Only-begotten Son of God to present Him to His Father in the Temple.
They brought Jesus to the Temple on the fortieth day after His birth to observe the Mosaic law that a woman was ritually unclean for forty days after the birth of a son.
As part of the purification requirements, they brought the two doves acceptable for a burnt offering and a sin offering when the mother was poor and couldn’t afford a lamb.
The Spirit of God had told Simeon he would see the Messiah, the consolation of Israel, before he died, and Simeon came into the temple that day prompted by the Holy Ghost.
When Simeon saw Jesus, he prayed the song of praise that we know of as Nunc Dimittis or The Canticle of Simeon (Nunc Dimittis comes from the first words of the canticle in Latin, “Now you dismiss …” ).
Simeon under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost proclaimed Christ the Light of the Gentiles and the glory of His people, Israel.
The holy widow, Anna, who was always at the Temple, also recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and then she talked about Him to everyone “who looked for the salvation of Israel.”
Luke 2:22-40 (Douay-Rheims)
22 And after the days of her purification, according to the Law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord:23 As it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord:
24 And to offer a sacrifice, according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons:
25 And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Ghost was in him.
26 And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when his parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the law,
28 He also took him into his arms, and blessed God, and said:
29 Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace;
30 Because my eyes have seen thy salvation,
31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:
32 A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
33 And his father and mother were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning him.
34 And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted;
35 And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.
36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser; she was far advanced in years, and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity.
37 And she was a widow until fourscore and four years; who departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day.
38 Now she, at the same hour, coming in, confessed to the Lord; and spoke of him to all that looked for the redemption of Israel.
39 And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their city Nazareth.
40 And the child grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom; and the grace of God was in him.
Photo credits: Roseanne T. Sullivan and Sancta Trinitas Unus Deus: Traditional Latin Mass Society of San Francisco
Much of this information is taken from and adapted from my article, ”February 2: A Feast of Manifestation, Purification, and Candles,” which was previously published at Dappled Things’ Deep Down Things blog.
Thank you for a luxurious post, fitting of the season.