Pastor’s Desk ~ February 2, 2025

Dear Fellow Parishioners,

This Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (February 2nd). It is one of the very few feasts during Ordinary time important enough to take the place of a Sunday Mass.

This feast is known alternately as the Presentation of the Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, because both traditional rites took place on the fortieth day after the birth of a male child. (It was eighty days for a female child.)

This was the time when they, Joseph and Mary, brought the child Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to complete Mary’s ritual purification and to provide the sacrifice specified in the Law of Moses, in which she took the option provided for poor people (those who could not afford a lamb) in Leviticus 12:8, sacrificing “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” Then, they presented Jesus to God through the priest, his representative. Here Mary appeared with her firstborn son, the true Messiah, marking the first time of Jesus’ coming into his temple, as was foretold (Malachi 3:1).

The presentation of Jesus in the Temple officially inducts him into Judaism and concludes the infancy narrative in the Gospel of Luke. Within the account, Luke’s narration of the Presentation in the Temple combines the purification rite with the Jewish ceremony of the redemption of the firstborn (Luke 2:23–24).

The presentation of a male child in the Temple fulfilled not only the obligation to offer thanks to the Lord and to dedicate the child to God, but also was a means of publicly ascertaining paternity. In the case of Jesus, it was a form of dual paternity, since he had both his Heavenly Father and Joseph, his earthly father. Joseph’s presence implicitly vouched for both.

The ancient rite for the purification of women after childbirth survived in the Catholic Church well into the 20th century, with a blessing known as the “churching of women” at the first return of the mother to the church community. In the days when children were baptized within a very few days of their birth, the mother typically did not attend – she was still recovering from childbirth. When at last the mother returned, she received this purification blessing whose roots go back to Leviticus and, arguably, further. Its origins relate back to primitive times when, because childbirth was not quite understood, it was regarded as somehow “unclean.”

Even today, the remnants of that purification rite are retained in modified form in the blessing of mothers during the Rite of Baptism which we celebrate here nearly every weekend.

Finally, the Feast of the Presentation is often referred to as Candlemas, which is also the traditional day for bringing candles to church to be blessed for use in the coming year. The connection is logical: as Christ is the Light of the World, the candles blessed in His name extend His light into homes, workplaces and everywhere His name is honored.

Blessings,
Fr. Bill Donahue