This feast celebrates the Presentation of Jesus in the temple and the Purification of our Lady, forty days after the birth of our Savior; it belongs to the Christmas season. The Purification is a festival of light. The procession, in which the blessed candles are carried by clergy and faithful, recalls by its symbolism the manifestation of Christ, the Light of the world, received in the temple by Simeon as God’s messenger: “A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.” This feast was kept in Jerusalem in the fourth century and is one of the oldest of Marian feasts.