Presentation of Jesus
Based on Wikipedia: Presentation of Jesus
Forty days after Christmas, a dying man finally got what he'd been waiting his whole life to see.
His name was Simeon, and according to the Gospel of Luke, he had received a promise that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. So when a young couple from Nazareth walked into the Jerusalem Temple carrying their infant son, Simeon recognized something that no one else in that crowded courtyard could perceive. He took the baby in his arms and spoke words that have echoed through two thousand years of Christian worship: "Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation."
This moment—the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple—might seem like a minor episode in the larger drama of the Gospels. It has none of the cosmic grandeur of the Nativity, none of the terror of the Flight into Egypt, none of the theological weight of the Crucifixion. And yet this quiet scene of an elderly man holding a six-week-old baby has generated one of Christianity's oldest continuous celebrations, a feast that has been observed for at least seventeen hundred years and continues in churches around the world today.
Why Forty Days?
To understand what was happening in that Temple, we need to step back into the world of first-century Jewish religious law.
According to the Book of Leviticus, a woman who had given birth to a male child was considered ritually impure for forty days. This wasn't a moral judgment—ritual impurity in ancient Judaism was a technical category, something that happened to everyone at various points in life and required specific procedures to resolve. After forty days, the mother was to come to the Temple and offer a sacrifice: a lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering.
But the Torah made provisions for those who couldn't afford a lamb. Poor families could substitute a second bird instead. And this is exactly what Mary and Joseph did. Luke makes a point of noting that they offered "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons"—the offering of the poor.
This detail has fascinated commentators for centuries. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that the Magi brought expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So why were Jesus' parents still poor enough to qualify for the reduced-rate sacrifice? The fourth-century scholar Cornelius à Lapide suggested that Mary, "zealously affected towards poverty," had deliberately accepted only a small portion of the Magi's gold, to demonstrate her contempt for earthly wealth. Others have simply noted that the timelines may not align—the Magi might have arrived later, or the gold might have been spent on the flight to Egypt.
Either way, the image is striking: the child whom Simeon would proclaim as "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" arrived at his Father's house under the humblest possible circumstances.
Two Ancient Witnesses
Simeon wasn't the only one waiting.
Luke introduces us to Anna, an elderly prophetess who had been widowed after just seven years of marriage and had spent the decades since essentially living at the Temple, worshipping night and day with fasting and prayer. When she saw the infant Jesus, she too recognized what she was seeing, and she began speaking about the child to everyone who was looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
The presence of these two figures—Simeon and Anna—serves a particular narrative purpose. In Jewish law, valid testimony required two witnesses. By presenting two independent prophetic confirmations of Jesus' identity, Luke establishes the scene's theological credibility within the framework his first-century Jewish readers would have understood.
But Simeon did more than simply identify Jesus as the Messiah. He also delivered a prophecy to Mary that contained a haunting warning: "A sword will pierce through your own soul also."
Christian tradition has long understood this as a reference to Mary's eventual grief at the Crucifixion. The image has inspired countless artistic depictions of the "Mater Dolorosa"—the Sorrowful Mother—often shown with a sword or swords piercing her heart. In this reading, even at the moment of joyful presentation, the shadow of the cross was already falling across the scene.
The Feast of Light
The celebration of this event began remarkably early in Christian history. We have sermons about the feast from bishops who died in the fourth century—Methodius of Patara, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa. By the 380s, when a Spanish nun named Egeria made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the feast was already being celebrated in Jerusalem with great solemnity.
Egeria's account is one of our most precious windows into early Christian worship. She describes the fortieth day after Epiphany (which was when Jerusalem celebrated Christ's birth at that time) as a major occasion, with processions to the great basilica that Emperor Constantine had built over the site of Christ's resurrection, sermons on the relevant passage from Luke, and a full celebration of the Eucharist. "All things are done in their order with the greatest joy," she wrote, "just as at Easter."
The feast's association with candles developed gradually. Simeon's proclamation that Jesus would be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" naturally suggested imagery of illumination, and by around 450 AD, worshippers in Jerusalem had begun holding lighted candles during the liturgy. This practice spread, and the feast eventually became known in the West as "Candlemas"—the Mass of the Candles.
The candle symbolism runs deep. In an age before electric lighting, fire was the only way to push back the darkness. The blessed candles of Candlemas were kept by families throughout the year, to be lit during storms, at deathbeds, and in moments of crisis. In Poland, the feast is still called the "Feast of Our Lady of Thunder Candles," because the blessed candles were traditionally placed in windows during thunderstorms to ward off danger.
A Plague and a Procession
The feast received a significant boost in status under dramatic circumstances.
In 541 AD, a devastating plague swept through Constantinople. The disease—which modern historians believe may have been the first great outbreak of bubonic plague, the same illness that would later cause the Black Death—killed thousands. The Emperor Justinian himself caught the disease, though he eventually recovered.
In desperation, Justinian consulted with the Patriarch of Constantinople and ordered a period of fasting and prayer throughout the entire Empire. On the Feast of the Presentation, they organized great processions through the towns and villages, with solemn prayers asking for deliverance from the plague.
The plague subsided. Whether this was divine intervention, natural disease dynamics, or coincidence, Justinian had no doubt about the cause. The following year, in gratitude, he elevated the feast to a more solemn celebration and established it throughout the Eastern Roman Empire. The feast has been one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church ever since.
A Feast by Many Names
Few Christian celebrations have accumulated as many names as this one.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it's often called the "Hypapante," from a Greek word meaning "meeting"—referring to the meeting between the infant Jesus and the elderly Simeon. The Armenian Church calls it "Tiarn'ndaraj," meaning "The Coming of the Son of God into the Temple."
In the Western churches, the feast has been known as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (emphasizing Mary's post-childbirth ritual), the Presentation of the Lord (emphasizing the bringing of Jesus to the Temple), and Candlemas (emphasizing the candle processions). The Roman Catholic Church, since the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, has officially used "Presentation of the Lord" and de-emphasized the purification language.
Different Christian communities also celebrate on different dates, though most fall on February 2nd—forty days after December 25th. But the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates Christmas on January 6th (the older date, before it was moved to December 25th in the Roman tradition), so their Presentation feast falls on February 14th, forty days later. Orthodox churches that still use the Julian calendar for liturgical purposes celebrate on what the Gregorian calendar calls February 15th.
The Churching of Women
The Presentation inspired a practice that persisted in Christianity for centuries: the "churching of women."
Based on the example of Mary coming to the Temple forty days after Jesus' birth, Christian women traditionally came to church for a special blessing forty days after giving birth. This wasn't quite the same as the Jewish purification ritual—Christian theology didn't consider childbirth to cause ritual impurity—but it served as a thanksgiving ceremony and a formal reintroduction of the mother to communal worship after her period of recovery.
The practice has mostly died out in Western Christianity, though it's still observed in some traditionalist Catholic and Anglican communities. In the Orthodox Church, babies of both sexes are still brought to church on the fortieth day after birth, in conscious imitation of the Presentation.
Calendar Complications
The date of Candlemas creates interesting intersections with other parts of the Christian calendar.
Some Christians maintain the tradition of leaving Christmas decorations up until Candlemas—making it the true end of the Christmas season, forty days after the Nativity. In the Church of England, the evening service on Candlemas traditionally marks the end of Epiphany, the season that began with the visit of the Magi.
The feast can never fall during Lent—the earliest that Ash Wednesday can occur is February 4th, for years when Easter falls on March 22nd (its earliest possible date). But in the older Tridentine form of the Roman Rite, Candlemas could fall during the pre-Lenten season called Septuagesima, and when this happened, the joyful "Alleluia" had to be omitted from the liturgy.
The Swedish and Finnish Lutheran Churches have their own system: since 1774, they've celebrated Candlemas on the Sunday falling between February 2nd and 8th—unless that Sunday happens to be the last Sunday before Lent, in which case they celebrate it a week earlier.
Modern Observances
In contemporary Catholicism, Candlemas has taken on an additional significance. Pope John Paul II connected the feast with the renewal of religious vows, and February 2nd is now observed as the World Day of Consecrated Life—a day to pray for and celebrate those who have taken vows as monks, nuns, friars, and members of religious orders.
The feast also holds an important place in Catholic devotional life as the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Those who pray the Rosary meditate on this scene every week, pondering the meaning of Simeon's prophecy and the mystery of God entering his own Temple as a helpless infant.
In the Liturgy of the Hours—the cycle of daily prayers observed by clergy and religious—Candlemas marks a transition point. From the beginning of Advent through February 2nd, the Marian hymn used is "Alma Redemptoris Mater" ("Loving Mother of the Redeemer"). After Candlemas, it changes to "Ave Regina Caelorum" ("Hail, Queen of Heaven") through Good Friday.
An Ending and a Beginning
The Presentation is a threshold moment.
For Simeon, it was the end of a lifetime of waiting. Having seen what he was promised, he could depart in peace. His canticle—the "Nunc Dimittis," named after its opening words in Latin, "Now dismiss"—is traditionally sung at Compline, the final liturgical prayer before sleep, and at funeral services. It is a prayer of completion, of a life's purpose fulfilled.
For Jesus, it was a beginning—his first entrance into the Temple that he would later call "my Father's house," the same Temple he would cleanse of money-changers, teach in as an adult, and ultimately predict the destruction of. The infant who was carried through these courts would return three decades later to turn the religious establishment upside down.
For Mary, it was a moment of mixed prophecy: joy at the recognition of her son's identity, but also the first intimation of the sorrow to come. The sword that would pierce her soul was still years away, but Simeon had named it.
And for the Church, this quiet domestic scene—a young couple fulfilling their religious obligations, an old man finally seeing his hope realized, a prophetess speaking of redemption—became one of the foundational moments worth celebrating year after year. Two thousand years later, candles are still blessed on the fortieth day after Christmas, and Simeon's words are still sung as the night office closes: "Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation."
The light he saw that day in the Temple is still being carried into the darkness.