Candlemas in 2025

Increasing light, yet deepening night. And groundhogs.

Today the church observed the The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. February 2 is the date for The Presentation because it’s forty days after Christmas Day, and parents went to the temple in Jerusalem to present firstborn sons forty days after their birth.

February 2 is also the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox, a cross-quarter day in the solar year. In the northern hemisphere, sunlight is noticeably warmer and the daylight hours are increasing significantly.

Another name for this date in the Christian church is Candlemas, a day when priests might bless enough candles for the parish church to use throughout the year, and when people might bring their supply of candles from home to be blessed. It’s the Celtic observance of Imbolc, the beginning of spring. And, of course, in the United States it’s Groundhog Day with the legend about whether or not the groundhog sees its shadows when it emerges briefly from its winter burrow predicting how many more weeks of winter were in store.

All of these variations on February 2 have to do with light, and while the Feast of the Presentation is on February 2 not because of the solar calendar but because of ti being forty days after Jesus’s birth, the Gospel passage for today, Luke 2:22-40, is consonant with the theme of light. When Simeon came into the temple and saw the infant with Mary and Joseph, he recognized Jesus as the Messiah he had been waiting for expectantly. Simeon took the baby in his arms and proclaimed “[M]y eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles.”

After his joyful proclamation, though, Simeon said to Mary: ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

In her collection The Stream and the Sapphire, poet Denise Levertov includes a short poem called Candemas that captures the contrast between the two parts of Simeon’s message. Here is the poem:

With certitude

Simeon opened

ancient arms

to infant light.

Decades

before the cross, the tomb

and the new life,

he knew

new life.

What depth

of faith he drew on,

turning illumined

towards deep night.

I had been invited to preach on creation care this morning at our diocesan cathedral. The example of Simeon’s deep faith allowing him to turn “illumined towards deep night” suggested to me that a deep and solid foundation of faith could help us look at climate change and other difficult environmental challenges. Our faith isn’t there to make us numb to reality, but to make us better able to bear the real experience of the real world.

This image from Denise Levertov’s poem also speaks to all the hard things in our world right now. The climate crisis is very real, and our nation rather than increasing our efforts to address it is vowing to increase the amount of fossil fuels we burn. This is pure madness, and yet we hear very little about it from standard news outlets or from people we talk with. All of us know people who are hurting, and we know people we worry about more than we did a month ago. Whether our friends, neighbors, or family members are immigrants, gay people, trans people, disabled people, people of color, or civil servants, life has become much more difficult and often much more dangerous than it was before this new administration took office.

People my age, elders, seem to be split in our willingness to look at, think about, talk about these difficult things. Some avoid reading or watching the news, sometimes in a sort of senior version of nihilism in which they feel too powerless to do anything in the face of the chaos to care about even looking at it. On the other hand, I was blessed to spend much of the afternoon on a Zoom call with some of the leadership of Third Act’s Faith working group talking about the need for action around climate change and preserving our democracy. These elders are all people firmly grounded in their faith and able to stand and look at what is happening. Both our faith as individuals and the interfaith community we have created by working together in solidarity give us a foundation that gives us hope that we can find our way forward. Finding our people, others who share our values and our commitment to the ideals of our faiths and our nation, is very important right now for people of all ages.

Why would we want to think about the hard things? What Simeon foresaw for Jesus wasn’t the end of the story. The deep night Simeon described would give way to life and light, to all the joy of Easter morning. We turn toward difficult things not because we mean to dwell there forever, but because our faith teaches us that walking through the hard things with one another is the way to the kingdom of God, the way to healing and joy.

We have some difficult days, weeks, and years ahead of us. May we have enough love and wisdom and strength to remain faithful and not turn away from the people and places in greatest need!

Votive candles and triptych at Church of the Resurrection, Omaha