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NEWSLETTER INSERT - ON THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION, 2ND FEBRUARY 2025



The Feast of the Presentation


'2nd February, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, occurs forty days after the birth of Jesus and is also known as Candlemas Day. This comes from the 6th century, in France, where the liturgy included a solemn blessing and procession with candles, symbolizing Christ as the Light of the World. This feast is also another epiphany in the sense that Christ is revealed as the Messiah through the testimony of Simeon and Anna. As Simeon stated in his prophecy “for my eyes have seen your Salvation … a light of revelation to the Gentiles.”

 

This day is also the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life, which was instituted by St. John Paul II in 1997. He attached it to this feast day of Candlemas because the consecrated men and women are to be the light in the world, imitating Jesus, the Light of the World.

 

‘Christ is our light.  But he has ignited us with the fire of his Spirit, and he calls us “the light of the world” (Mat. 5:14).  We are not meant, any more than He was, to keep our light under the bushel basket of the home or our parish church.  The light we have received is meant for an entire world languishing in darkness.  The Presentation is a feast of mission, a reminder of the call to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to what our last three Popes have called “The New Evangelization.”  The candles which we so enjoy in our liturgies and devotions are a reminder that we must not rest while there is even one left who remains in the valley of the shadow of death.


Marcellino D’Ambrosio

 

“For our sake He was presented to the Lord that we may learn to offer ourselves to God”.


St Thomas Aquinas


“Those who have met Jesus no longer fear anything. We too can repeat the words of the elderly Simeon, he too was blessed by the encounter with Christ, after a lifetime spent in anticipation of this event: ‘Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for my eyes have seen your salvation' (Lk 2:29-30). At that instant, at last, we will no longer need anything, we will no longer see in a confused way. We will no longer weep in vain, because all has passed, even the prophecies, even consciousness. But not love – this endures. Because “love never ends” (1 Cor 13:8).


Pope Francis, 25th Oct. 2017

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