Candlemas

Today, February 2, is the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is also called Candlemas (Candelaria) when candles are blessed. It is the festival of lights.

Light is one of the most important, and of course the most spectacular of religious symbols. The Bible begins with God’s command: "Let there be light, and there was light." (Gen. 1.3) That was the beginning of Creation: of being from non-being, of order from chaos, of light from darkness.

As Creation began with light, so the Redemption began when God’s Word, His only Son, became man as the light of the world.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shone in darkness, and the darkness did not swallow it. (John 1.4-5)

Milton began one of the Books of Paradise Lost with a hymn to Jesus Christ as the incarnate word, the radiance of the divine light: "Hail holy light, radiance of heaven’s First-Born."

Milton was echoing what the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament says of Jesus. It describes him in his Divinity by using two metaphors. One is the metaphor of the sealing wax used for letters and documents. Upon the melted wax the metal seal is imprinted, leaving upon the wax a perfect image of the seal. The word for that image in Greek is character. Jesus is the character, the perfect image of the Father, the imprint of his divine being. (In the Greek original: character tes Hypostasews.) The other metaphor is that of light. There is a distinction between the source of light and the radiance that emanates from it. God the Father is the source of light, and Jesus Christ is the radiance of that light. (in the Greek: apaugasma tes doxes – literally, the radiance of God’s glory) (Hebrew 1.3).

Jesus himself would later refer to himself as the light of the world: "I am the light of the world. He who walks with me walks not in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8.2).

And just as the Bible begins with God creating light, so the Bible ends with those who are saved being enveloped in God’s own light: "They shall see him face to face, and bear his mark on their forehead. The night shall be no more. They will not need light from lamps, or the sun, for God himself shall be their light. And they shall reign forever" (Revelation 22.4-5).

It is with this rich symbolic background that the Christian liturgy uses light as one of its principal symbols. On Holy Saturday the "new fire" is blessed, from which is lighted the Paschal Candle, described as "Lumen Christi" – The Light of Christ. Lighted candles are used at Mass and at the celebration of the sacraments. At baptism the newly baptized persons (or in the case of infants, their godparents) are given a lighted candle with the ritual words: "Receive this burning light. Keep it burning until the day when you hand it to Christ in heaven."

That is the meaning of today’s feast, Candlemas. There had been in Roman times a pagan festival of lights in February. The Church took it over and gave it a new symbolic meaning. The lights are no longer a meaningless illumination, but a meaningful symbol of Him who said, "I am the light of the world. He who walks with me, walks not in darkness."