Now that Christmas is behind us, our attention turns toward Easter. Unlike the date of Christmas, the date of Easter fluctuates. Since the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 (happy 1,700th anniversary, by the way!), the date of Easter has been assigned to the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This formula allows for a wide range of possible Easter dates—as early as March 22 and as late as April 25.
I knew that Easter was late in 2025 but could not recall exactly when it was. So, letting Google do Nicaea’s computations for me, I looked it up on my smartphone. But when the results popped up, it wasn’t the date that first caught my eye, but the silly, saccharine images of pastel eggs and bunnies.
And why not? Having just come out of the Christmas season (or, more accurately, having been through the post-Halloween/pre-Christmas period), our senses were bombarded from every other lawn with blow-up versions Buddy the Elf, flailing/waving/dancing air Santas, and larger-than-life-sized Grinches. It is as if the secular culture erases Christmas and Easter by coopting and degrading them, turning them into banal mockeries.
So, we keep trying to “keep Christ in Christmas” and focusing on Christ’s cross as the center of all history—as we must. But there’s another, more immediate liturgical celebration in the life of our Lord that risks being overshadowed by the secular world: the Feast of the Presentation.
Who, after all, is the most talked about figure of February 2nd? Is it the infant Christ or Punxsutawney Phil? Still, their shared celebrity on this day is not unrelated, as both are directing our attention to the victorious light about to dawn.
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice (December 21, 22, or 23) marks the shortest day of the year, while the spring equinox sees the sun’s daylight conquer night’s darkness. The middle of this 90-day span lands around February 2, a midway point between the small flash of a new creation’s fiat lux at Christ’s birth and the eventual overcoming of the darkness that surrounds us at his Passion.
We have a brilliant opportunity in 2025 to showcase this “light of revelation to the Gentiles” (as Simeon says when our Lord appeared in the Temple), since February 2 this year will fall on a Sunday.
It is true that most celebrations ranking as feasts don’t overshadow a Sunday—but “feasts of the Lord” do this very thing. Thus, the feast of St. Lawrence on Sunday, August 10, 2025, will give way to the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, but the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord will take precedence over the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time. This fact leaves all liturgy-loving Catholics (whether cleric or lay) with a question: how will the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord look in your parish this year?
For many parishes—indeed, most parishes—Mass will begin as usual: the people gathered in the nave, the ministers processing alone to the sanctuary to the hymn “Christ is the World’s Light” (or similar), and the Sign of the Cross at the chair. But the Roman Missal, the Church, and a substantial, authentic liturgy envision something else.
Ideally, “a gathering takes place at a smaller church or other suitable place other than inside the church to which the procession will go. The faithful hold in their hands unlighted candles” (first rubric for February 2 from the Roman Missal). As the ministers approach, the faithful light their candles and sing: “Behold, our Lord will come with power, to enlighten the eyes of his servants, alleluia” from the prophet Isaiah (34:4-5). Then all make the sign of the cross, followed by the priest’s greeting, introduction, and blessing and sprinkling of the candles. After the thurible is filled with incense, the priest or deacon invites all to “go in peace to meet the Lord.” And while all follow the priest into the church, the faithful sing the words of holy Simeon upon meeting Christ: “A light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” And only when the priest arrives at the chair is the Gloria sung and Mass continues as usual.
Most Catholics will never participate in such a procession, either because February 2 falls during the week—or because the celebration of the grand entrance of “Christ entering the Temple” for the first time is omitted.
To be sure, today’s priests and parishes measure the Missal’s ideal entrance against other factors: the multiplication of Masses and locations that a priest must serve, the limited musical and ministerial resources available in many parishes, and an all-too-common disdain for anything that might lengthen the usual Sunday liturgical experience. But at the same time, priests and parishes must make the Missal the norm and make the mens ecclesiae their own. Recent popes have encouraged this very thing.
On the 25th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, for example, Pope John Paul II suggested that one of the reasons that the revised rites have met with such resistance is that “the transition from simply being present, very often in a rather passive and silent way, to a fuller and more active participation has been for some people too demanding” (Vicesimus Quintus Annus, 11). Pope Benedict XVI claimed that the riches of the reformed rites “are yet to be fully explored” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 3; see also 40). Similarly, Pope Francis has called all in the Church to “faithful reception [of the revised rites], practical obedience, [and] wise implementation in celebrations…by overcoming unfounded and superficial readings, a partial reception, and practices that disfigure it” (2017 address to Participants in the 68th National Liturgical Week).
Christ is coming; his light is dawning. May our liturgies light a fire as the Magisterium desires, as the Roman Missal prescribes, and as the faithful require.
