February 3, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2, 2025, at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 24; Hebrews 2:14-18; and Luke 2:22-40.
Certain feast days of the Church year take precedence over the usual Sunday readings. This is one of those days. The Jewish Law called for parents to present their first-born sons in the Jerusalem Temple on their 40th day of life. February 2 is the 40th and absolute final day of the Christmas season. No matter what day of the week February 2 falls, we celebrate Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the Temple on his 40th day of life.
In the Temple, the Holy Family is visited by two prophets proclaiming astounding news. One declares that Jesus will be the light to all nations. Therefore, for over a thousand years, it has been traditional to bless new candles on this day we sometimes call “Candlemas.” [Bless candles.]
And now, let us celebrate God’s merciful love!
Simeon has captured the imagination of artists for centuries. He’s often depicted with a long, white beard, holding Jesus up in what many of us now call “The Lion King” pose. Every night of the year, his canticle, “Lord, let your servant go in peace,” is prayed as part of the divine office. Luke tells us a lot more about Anna’s life story than Simeon’s, but she seems to disappear into the background. Although Anna presumably spoke just as joyously as Simeon, her words are not recorded.
February 2 is my absolute favorite day of the year to celebrate infant baptisms. Just like any active Christian 16 years or older can serve as a witness at a baptism, any of us can be prophets like Simeon and Anna. Just as Pope Francis invites each of us to be pilgrims of hope during this Jubilee Year, Simeon and Anna simply proclaimed God’s promises that had already been revealed in Scripture. Can we imagine ourselves as Simeon or Anna? Or do Simeon’s and Anna’s stories seem too different from our own?
And now, an excursus to invite us to expand our imaginations. For two months, we have heard many Scripture passages about light and darkness. Advent falls in December, the darkest month of the year. Christmas Day celebrates the promise that God will not let everything fall into darkness. It comes 3 days after the winter solstice, when we can begin perceiving that the days are getting longer again. But today? We’re halfway between the solstice and the first day of spring. The truth of longer days is clear to anyone paying attention!
Today, we think of February 2 as the mid-point of the season of winter, but that wasn’t always the case. Long ago, humans defined the seasons as beginning 6-and-a-half weeks earlier than when they start now. As some of our Christmas carols indicate, the solstice was not considered the beginning of winter, but the middle of winter. If you do the math correctly, that would change February 2 from the bleak mid-winter to… the first day of spring! But as all Chicagoans know, the six-and-a-half weeks between February 2 and March 20 don’t often feel like spring. These days can be dreary.
The Germanic tribes of the late Roman Empire knew this, too. At some point after the Christians interacted with Germanic tribes, Candlemas got tied to the belief that the weather on February 2nd foretold a lot about the upcoming 6-and-a-half weeks. Here are the lyrics of one Old English song:
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.
Don’t ask me why, but to determine if February 2 was a bright day or a cloudy day, the Germans traditionally looked to the shadows of… hedgehogs. However, when German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, there weren’t an abundance of hedgehogs. So they looked to groundhogs, instead.
So, as bizarre as it sounds, when the president of the Inner Circle presented Punxsutawney Phil to the public at Gobbler’s Knob at dawn this morning, it was oddly related to the prophet Simeon holding the baby Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple more than two thousand years ago!
Things are not always what they seem. Groundhogs can have spiritual significance. February 2 can be a spring day. And our presumptions about Simeon and Anna could be completely wrong. Luke tells us that Anna was a prophetess, but I doubt the Temple functionaries thought she was. Presumably widowed for about 60 years with no family to support her, from the part of Israel farthest from Jerusalem, she was at the Temple night and day, and she fasted frequently. Simeon’s age is not given in the Bible. Perhaps he was a teenager and had only recently received his revelation from God. Perhaps his joy in seeing the Christ was mixed with trepidation that perhaps he faced an early death.
We are all called to witness light in the darkness, just like Anna and Simeon. Anna may have appeared to be a wise and wizened prophetess, or she may have appeared to be just another elderly person struggling with homelessness and food insecurity, seeking shelter in a church building. Instead of being a confident elder with a long white beard, perhaps Simeon was an olive-skinned teenager with just the first wisps of facial hair, similar to a young man facing a brutal barrage of chemotherapy to battle a terminal illness. We have no idea if Anna and Simeon were experiencing happiness in their personal lives on that day in the Temple; nevertheless, they proclaimed for the ages their joy in the coming of the Lord!
Whatever weather we’re currently experiencing on our spiritual journeys, whether it be fair and bright or clouds and rain — and believe me, the election and the news has people in this parish polarized about whether this is a time of a new dawn or a time of gathering darkness — we are each called to witness to the light and to push back the darkness, like Simeon and Anna.
No matter our age, no matter our spiritual circumstances, no matter our politics, no matter what we think about the news these days, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil predicted – we are the light of the world. As Jesus taught 30 years after he encountered Simeon and Anna: our light must shine before others.