With today's feast, we come to an end of the Christmas cycle.
Officially in the Novus Ordo, the cycle ends with the baptism of the Lord,
but there is still the theme and the spirituality of Christmas woven through the liturgy
all the way until February 2nd when we celebrate the Feast of the Purification
40 days after the birth of the Lord.
So being 40 days and it being a fixed,
feast every year on February 2nd, 40 days after Christmas,
it is part of the Christmas cycle.
And the Christmas cycle comes to a close with this
prophetic grace of our Lord's being brought into the temple by his mother
and his being recognized by Simeon and Anna
as the one who is
to come.
And we have a prefigurement or a premonition, if you will,
of our Lord's destiny as a sacrifice for sins.
He is the sign that will be contradicted
and he will be for the rise and fall of many in Israel
and his blessed mother's soul will be pierced by a sword.
And it is the prayer of Simeon, his prayer of praise,
the Nunc Dimittis, which we pray every evening at Compline,
that gives to this celebration its theme.
Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace
according to your word from my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory for your people Israel.
And it's for this reason that we bless candles on February 2nd
and walk in procession with those candles
and refer to this mass, this celebration, as Candle Mass.
Because Jesus is the light.
And Our Lady is the true light bearer.
She brings Jesus into the temple.
And, of course, when God was in the temple, there was light.
There was light.
There was glory.
There was the cloud of God's glory.
And that glory had not been seen in the temple for many years
because the Ark of the Covenant and the Shekinah of God were gone.
And there had to be that absence of the light in the temple
because there needed to be a kind of separation and an end
to what was merely a sign and prefigurement in order
that the truth and the fulfillment might come.
And that is the true Ark of the Covenant, our Blessed Mother,
who brings the light of the world into the temple, Jesus Christ, our Savior.
The Fathers of the Church remind us also that we celebrate this feast in the way
that we do with the lighting of candles and the carrying of those candles in procession
because we are to imitate.
We are to imitate.
We are to imitate and assimilate the mystery that we celebrate.
Our Lady brings Jesus into the temple and presents him there as a sign.
Of course, what's going on in terms of Jewish law is that our Lord is being redeemed
in fulfillment of the prescriptions of the Old Testament that the firstborn should be bought back from God as a,
as a payment and a remembrance of the fact that he passed over the homes of the Israelites
when he struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians.
So the firstborn of all the Jews belonged to God and needed to be bought back, needed to be redeemed.
And the woman, 40 days after the birth of the child, needed to be purified,
needed to have a sacrifice offered on her behalf for her purification to cleanse her
from ritual impurity that she incurred through childbirth.
But in this case, of course, our Lord and our Lady go through this Old Testament,
these Old Testament prescriptions, not because Jesus needed to be redeemed,
which of course is impossible.
He is the redeemer.
He is the meaning of the sign.
And our Lady didn't need to be purified because she was immaculate.
But they went through this observance out of obedience and in order to fulfill the signs,
in order to bring them to completion.
Because when our Lord comes into the temple, he is the true redeemer,
the one who brings real redemption from sin, not just a hope, but the actual fact.
Because his blood is being offered, not just a lamb in sign of what our Lord did for the people of the Old Testament,
but that lamb represented Jesus and now he is present.
And our Lady is the true Ark of the Covenant.
Who brings into the temple, not a pair of stone tablets upon which the law was written,
but the heart of Christ upon not only where the law is written, but where it's lived.
And we, in today's liturgy, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we celebrate these mysteries
and we participate in them and we carry our candle, we carry the light, because we want to see.
Before us on our journey.
And we ask that we might be like our blessed mother,
who carries the light and shines it into the darkness and illumines the path for all those who wish
to know the truth and follow it.
And so, Christmas concludes with this remembrance that our Lord is always the light,
and he is always with us and
and he is always with us and
Our Blessed Mother is always bringing him to us.
And we are called likewise to meditate on these things
and to carry the light with us as well,
to be always in the presence of the Ark
and the new covenant within.
And our Lord is truly always with us.
Every Mass is a candle Mass.
Every Mass is a participation in the light of Christ.
At every Mass, our Blessed Mother brings Jesus to us.
And we have reason to praise God
for the light, for revelation to the Gentiles
and glory for the people Israel,
the new Israel, which is the people of God, the Church.
So we give thanks for these graces
and give thanks for the mystery of Christmas,
the mystery of Emmanuel,
Jesus with us always,
who is the light of the world,
revealing himself to us,
showing us the way,
and giving us everything that we need
to find our way to heaven.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
God bless you.