The Feast of Light

On February 2, we will celebrate the feast of the Presentation. This feast is also called Candlemas, because candles are blessed for home and Church use. Christ is the light of the world and Mary is the Queen of Light.

The Mother of God is surrounded by the sun. Who is the sun? Christ, the great King of Light. Whoever exposes himself uniquely to the light must himself become light. If our Lord is the Light itself, we are justified in calling the Mother of God a bearer of the light, or a Queen of Light.

She wants to radiate all that the infinite God has given her. She is a child of the Sun, a pre-eminent person of the Sun, because she bears Christ, because Christ has embodied his entire greatness in her in human and feminine form.

We, too, must become people of the Sun. We bear the Sun within us. The Sun is Christ…It should be our ideal to march through this present-day world as people of the Sun.[1]

 The following text is taken from 200 Question About Schoenstatt.

In Schoenstatt, Candlemas has a special meaning. The “Candlemas vision” refers to an inner certitude which Father Kentenich received two weeks after January 20, 1942. The conviction grew within him that God would grant him his freedom and ensure a richly blessed future for his movement because he had freely decided to go to the concentration camp. The day this happened was February 2, 1942, known traditionally as the feast of “Candlemas” (Presentation of the Lord), hence the title “Candlemas vision.”

The term “vision” does not refer to any kind of apparition or other unusual phenomenon, but to a conviction inspired by grace. Because the resulting conviction included the fact that Schoenstatt would survive to thrive and be a blessing for the Church, the term “Candlemas vision” also came to be used to describe the prayer that the pope and bishops also come to this same conviction about Schoenstatt as a genuine work of God and as a source of ongoing blessing for the Church.[2]

[1] J. Kentenich, Sign of Light for the World, 9-10.

[2] J. Niehaus, 200 Questions about Schoenstatt, #182.