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Dear St. Christopher’s Family,
This week we observe Groundhog Day, and it’s easy to feel like we’ve woken up in a never-ending day. Even as I began this message and looked at previous years' note for this weekend, more times than not we were emerging from a deep-freeze that kept us shut up in our homes for a week. But Groundhog Day is also known, in ours and other traditions, as Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation. It is the custom for that feast to be the time of year when all the new beeswax candles are blessed, both for home and church use.
Now what does either the Presentation or Groundhogs have to do with Candles? It’s a fair question, but a glance at the calendar reveals that this week we are marking the exact halfway point of Winter. The short days of gloom are giving way to considerably more light that will only grow brighter as we enter the Spring, and begin our Lenten journey toward Easter.
Candlemas, and the Presentation, also introduce us to the last of the prophets, last in the sense that they foreshadowed the coming of Christ. We meet Simeon, whose reward for faithfulness was the promise that he would live to see the Messiah. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but in many ways he’s that ancient type of a Punxsatawney Phil: declaring an end to the dark and gloom, and with it sin, and ushering in warmth and light, and with it the Kingdom of God.
Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.
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