I am no expert on Candlemas. And if the truth is being told, it’s likely that the average Catholic in many epochs of our history wasn’t necessarily perfectly catechized on every feast and its purposes and graces. Human nature has always been what it is, and human life has always been a battle against distractions and the world’s draw.
But for me, this is a message of hope, and the point.
Our lack of knowledge and the distance from our completion as saints doesn’t negate the beauty of these opportunities for grace. Our inadequate grasping of eternal mysteries shouldn’t hold me or you back from rejoicing. Catholicism’s genius, clearly by divine appointment, is that it sweeps most of us—dirty, messy, distracted, hungry pilgrims that we are—up into something bigger than us, even while we frequently fail to understand. Many of us are barely mumbling through a Rosary or occasional daily Mass while we try to navigate life’s stressors and distractions, but these days repeatedly invite us to again “come and see” what God is doing, even in us, even now, even while we stumble.
The saints lead the way, of course. More of us—all of us—should be steeped in deep, regular mental prayer and intimacy with our Savior. The world’s souls suffer when we don’t. We hold their example as our ideal, we pray to become more of what we are, we strive, with grace, to fulfill everything God created us to be.
But when we have not yet become more, we are also beautifully, wonderfully, humbly dragged along by the beauty of our Tradition—and traditions. We are a part of the whole Body, and as long as we continue to orient our lives around staying in a state of grace, we are inseparable from it.
We can hold in tension the reality that we can know so little and yet, on the ship of the faith, be moved along in grace with all of those seeking after the Lord.
God knows our nature, and accounted for it. He gave us a structure in the Church so that on the weary, thin days we might still rise up in our lethargy and go to Mass, beeswax candles in tow, sometimes forgetting the why but receiving the eternal graces of Heaven nonetheless.
The more that we choose to deliberately live out the fullness of graces given to us, and the more we become intimate with Christ, the more there is available to us. It is needed.
But on the many days where we are giving our best and it doesn’t seem anywhere near enough, where we can’t really see through the fog to the significance of everything we’ve been given, we can come, like tired children, to the arms of our Father who meets us in these constant North Stars toward Heaven.
When we as a Body lose a sense of these reminders, it becomes harder to be swept up in these graces. While staying in autopilot isn’t advised or good, the cultural inertia to continue an orientation to what is holy and good is an immense asset we would unwisely shed.
Candlemas is rooted in the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus/Purification of Mary, and carries a special weight for those specifically consecrated to God in the beauty of religious vocation. We have our candles for the year ahead blessed and begin to contemplate the darkness of Lent in its inevitable motion toward the light of the Resurrection on Easter.
There is much more to go and learn about for those able, about this feast and about every beautiful feast the Church in her wisdom has enshrined in our precious few days here on Earth. But whether we have the ability, time, or wherewithal to properly contemplate this day, we can all humbly still be swept up in its beauty and graces.
And here rests the driver behind this whole music project, not as expert but as lover of beauty, as lover of these beautiful roots that are ours to tap into, however much or little we understand. Our faith is a rich heritage, like a home with familiar corners where we belong. Here as elsewhere are a few of the beautiful fragments and reminders that at any moment can sweep us right back up into the heights of beauty and eternity from our lethargy and distraction.