Feast of the Presentation

I love feast days such as the one today where we celebrate more than one event at once. On January first we celebrated the Feast of the Circumcision and the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Today we celebrate Mary's Purification, Christ's Presentation in the temple, and Candlemas.

It is beautiful how the Church incorporates certain Hebraic rituals or events into the calendar. This isn't just a random day that the Church picked to celebrate the Presentation. This feast is forty days after Christmas because the women always went to the temple to be purified forty days after their baby was born. If Protestants could see that there are Biblical reasons for many of the Church's feast days, I suspect they would be able to have a much greater understanding of the liturgical year.

Saints Simeon and Anna, pray for us.