"After Terce follows the Blessing of the Candles, which is one of the
three principal Blessings observed by the Church during the year; the other two
are those of Ashes and of the Palms. The signification of the ceremony bears so
essential a connection with the mystery of our Lady's Purification, that if
Septuagesima, Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima fall on the 2nd of February, the
Feast is deferred to tomorrow; but the Blessing of the Candles, and the
Procession which follows it, always take place on this precise day.
"In order to give uniformity to the three great Blessings of the year,
the Church prescribes that for that of the Candles the same color for the
vestments of the sacred Ministers as is used in the two other Blessings of the
Ashes and Palms -- namely, purple. This solemn function which is
inseparable from the day on which our Lady's Purification took place, may be
gone through every year on the 2nd of February, without changing the color
prescribed for the three Sundays just mentioned.
"It is exceedingly difficult to say what was the origin of this
ceremony. Baronius, Thomassin, and others are of the opinion that it was
instituted toward the close of the 5th century, by Pope Gelasius, in order to
give a Christian meaning to certain vestiges still retained by the Romans of the
old Lupercalia. St. Gelasius certainly did abolish the last vestiges of the
Lupercalia, which in earlier times the pagans used to celebrate in the month of
February. Pope Innocent III, in one of his sermons for the feast of the
Purification, attributes the institution of this ceremony of Candlemas to the
wisdom of the Roman Pontiffs, who turned into the present religious rite the
remnants of an ancient pagan custom, which had not quite died out among the
Christians. The old pagans, he says, used to carry lighted torches in memory of
those which the fable gives to Ceres, when she went to the top of Mount Etna in
search of her daughter Proserpine. But against this we have to object that on
the pagan calendar of the Romans there is no mention of any Feast in honor of
Ceres for the month of February. We therefore prefer adopting the opinion of Dom
Hugh Menard, Rocca, Henschenius, and Pope Benedict XIV; that an ancient feast
that was kept in February, and was called the Amburbalia, during which the
pagans used to go through the city with lighted torches in their hands, gave
occasion to the Sovereign Pontiffs to substitute in its place, a Christian
ceremony, which they attached to the Feast of the sacred mystery, in which
Jesus, the Light of the world, was presented in the temple by His Virgin-Mother.
"The mystery of today's ceremony has frequently been explained by
liturgists, dating from the 7th century. According to Ivo of Chartres, the wax,
which is formed from the juice of flowers by the bee, always considered as the
emblem of virginity, signifies the virginal flesh of the Divine Infant, who
diminished not, either by His conception or His birth, the spotless purity of
His Blessed Mother. The same holy bishop would have us see, in the flame of our
Candle, a symbol of Jesus who came to enlighten our darkness. St. Anselm,
Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking on the same mystery, bids us consider three
things in the blessed Candle: the wax, the wick, and the flame. The wax, he
says, which is the production of the virginal bee, is the Flesh of our Lord; the
wick, which is within, is His Soul; the flame, which burns on top, is His
divinity."
--- Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB,
The Liturgical Year
