Popular piety

The evangelizing power of popular piety is a theme in the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, the Joy of the Gospel. There are great traditions of popular piety associated with the celebration of the Presentationof the Lord today. The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today carry themes of great joy and some fear and trepidation. The Messianic Promise of God is delivered to the people in the words of the Prophet Malachi and this brings hope of the return of the majesty of the Davidic Kingdom and at the same time the refiner’s fire and the fuller’s soap remind the people that their lack of observance of the ancient command to put God first may demand they change and be purified. The Letter to the Hebrews deals with the Son of God who comes to fulfill the Promise of the Messiah chooses to be humbled as human who submits to rejection by the people to the point of death to free people from death and to be the perfect sacrifice to expiate sin. Popular piety today traditionally includes processions and blessing of candles (Candlemas). This day, until recent times, marked the end of the Christmas Season. Scholars, like Robert P. Heaneyof Creighton University, find in the structure of the Nativity Narrative in the Gospel of Luke to be framed between two bookends of elderly couples in the Temple astounded by miraculous birth. (Zachariah and Elizabeth; Simeon and Anna). The actions of the Holy Family described in the text from Luke indicate observance of the purification rules in Mosaic Law involving pregnant women forty days after childbirth and the offering of the first born son to God. (Some scholars suggest that Luke, a Gentile, may have been somewhat ignorant of Jewish traditions) Perhaps the beeswax candles with which we will celebrate Church (or home) liturgy in the next year will be blessed today and we will have a sign of the Incarnate present to us and maybe we will be called to deepen our experience with the guidance in the Sacred Texts and in some way the message which is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23 ) will be our lived experience and our popular piety will be in collaboration with the exhortation of Papa Francesco.