Of Birthday's, Winter & Mary - It's Groundhog Day, My Birthday & Candlemas!

All I want for my birthday is....

… for you to receive the Graces needed for a Holy life, death and a Blessed Eternity. But if you INSIST on a birthday gift for me, please help save LIVE! Talk Radio and listen to The Mike Church Show today. I’ll make it easy for you, click the button below twixt 6:30 and 10:00am today!

If you listen today I will update you on Eggmageddon™, (podcast version is here)the various and sundry outrages of the day, talk to ace citizen journalist Michal Krupa, LIVE! from Poland AND tell you my personal story of how Mary of Nazareth, Our Lady, shadowed me my whole life, keeping Herself and Her charming Graces there for me to accept, though I seldom did, refusing to let me remain immersed in sin and debauchery until finally Her Immaculate Heart won my blackened heart on 08 December, 2014. What is Candlemas and why is it one of 3 Marian High Feast Days every year? Here’s why:

The Forty Days of Mary’s Purification are now completed, and she must go up to the Temple, there to offer to God her Child Jesus. Before following the Son and his Mother in this their mysterious journey, let us spend our last few moments at Bethlehem, in lovingly pondering over the mysteries at which we are going to assist.

The Law commanded that a woman who had given birth to a son should not approach the Tabernacle for the term of forty days, after which time she was to offer up a lamb as a holocaust, and a turtle or dove as a sin offering. But if she were poor, and could not provide a lamb, she was to offer, in its stead, a second turtle or dove.

Mary was a Daughter of Israel — she had given Birth to Jesus — he was her First-born Son. Could such a Mother, and such a Son, be included in the Laws we have just quoted? Was it becoming that Mary should observe them?

If she considered the spirit of these legal enactments, and why God required the ceremony of Purification, it was evident that she was not bound to them. They, for whom these Laws had been made, were espoused to men; — Mary was the chaste Spouse of the Holy Ghost, a Virgin in conceiving, and a Virgin in giving Birth to, her Son; her purity had ever been spotless as that of the Angels — but it received an incalculable increase by her carrying the God of all sanctity in her womb, and bringing him into this world. Moreover, when she reflected upon her Child being the Creator and sovereign Lord of all things — how could she suppose that he was to be submitted to the humiliation of being ransomed as a slave, whose life and person are not his own?

Candlemas at Mass

And yet, the Holy Spirit revealed to Mary, that she must comply with both these Laws. She, the holy Mother of God, must go to the Temple like other Hebrew mothers, as though she had lost a something which needed restoring by a legal sacrifice. He, that is the Son of God and Son of Man, must be treated in all thing’s as though, he were a Servant, and be ransomed in common with the poorest Jewish boy. Mary adores the will of God, and embraces it with her whole heart.

This candlemas, don’t forget to acquire some beeswax candles and bring them to Mass (if you’re a Catholic) and have them blessed. Here’s why.

On February 2, forty days after Christmas, the Latin Rite celebrates the feast of the Purification. It is also called Candlemas because on this day Christ, the Light of the World, entered the holy temple nestled in the arms of His Immaculate Mother. Therefore, this is the day that candles are blessed and passed out at Holy Mass if the faithful have not brought their own to the ceremony. Blessed candles must be made from at least 51% beeswax.

Yesterday we also began February, the month The Church has decreed as belonging to devotion to The Holy Family!

Oh, and it’s also Groundhog Day!

May the Light of Christ and His Blessed Mother be with you on this Candlemas.

Our Lady of Walsingham, ora pro nobis!