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On February 2nd, we celebrate the Presentation of our Lord, traditionally called Candlemas, which   commemorates the presentation of Christ in the temple and the ritual purification of the Virgin Mary. It falls exactly 40 days after Christmas.

On Candlemas candles are traditionally blessed. I didn't really know why candles were blessed until I saw this explanation on Jessica's blog at Catholic Cuisine: Candles are blessed on this day to help us remember the words of holy Simeon who called the babe in his arms, "A light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel."

This year we celebrated this feast day similar to last year, except this year we were able to attend the daily morning Mass and have some of our candles from our home blessed in our church's chapel. Then everyone processed into the main church with candles that were lit in the chapel.

Daily Mass attendees placed their candles onto the table so that our priest could bless them with holy water.  Then we everyone went into the church with a lit candle.

When we got home from Mass I set up our kitchen table with our blessed candles and opened the book Mary, the Mother of Jesus to the page about the Presentation of our Lord.



We also made our cookie candles with cookie drip plates like we did last year for this feast day.


On our table I also displayed the Joyful Mysteries and talked about how the 4th Joyful Mystery is the Presentation of Jesus in the temple.  The middle candle is the candle that was given to us at our wedding.  One of our relatives attached our wedding invitation to a candle and put a bead border around it.  The other candle in the photo below is my 9 year old daughter's candle she received at her First Holy Communion. 

Candlemas Cookies with cookie drip cake and lots of "wax" icing!




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This will be another quick post as I continue to train for my 2nd half marathon coming up on March 20th.  I'm writing this post, despite it being weeks after Candlemas, mainly for my own reference as I will link this post on my A Slice of Liturgical Life page for future reference. If my blog posts of how we celebrate feast days happens to inspire a reader, then that's icing on the cake! 
 
The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, commonly called Candlemas, commemorates the presentation of Christ in the temple and the ritual purification of the Virgin Mary. It falls exactly 40 days after Christmas. 

Candlemas is celebrated on February 2nd and on this feast candles are traditionally blessed. I didn't really know why candles were blessed until I saw this explanation on Jessica's blog at Catholic Cuisine: Candles are blessed on this day to help us remember the words of holy Simeon who called the babe in his arms, "A light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel." 

We have celebrated Candlemas in the past by bringing candles from home to a local Catholic Church and the priest blessed our candles.  This year we didn't bring candles to our church, but rather we lit candles in our home and read about the Feast of the Presentation in Mary: The Mother of Jesus book by Tomie DePaola.   We also talked about how the Feast of the Presentation is the 4th Joyful Mystery when praying the rosary.


This is the first year we made "Candlemas Cookies" using the instructions at Catholic Cuisine.  We had alot of fun making these and I hope to make it a family tradition! 


Have a blessed week!