2011-02-02

Candlemas Day

Christmas is officially over.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Candlemas Day, and 40 days after Christmas.

Forty days after the birth of Christ Mary complied with this precept of the law, she redeemed her first-born from the temple (Numbers 18:15), and was purified by the prayer of Simeon the just, in the presence of Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:22).
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From Jerusalem the feast of the fortieth day spread over the entire Church and later on was kept on the 2nd of February, since within the last twenty-five years of the fourth century the Roman feast of Christ's nativity (25 December) was introduced.

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