Candlemas, Saint Brigid, and the Light of True Faith

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, known in English-speaking countries as "Candlemas" for the tradition of blessing candles on this day. Yesterday, she celebrated the Feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patrons of Ireland. These two feasts, which occur within a day of each other, speak to the great Christian theme of meeting and parting, of assimilation and rejection, in short, of Incarnation.

Last October, I wrote of the pagan origins of All Saints' Day in the Irish harvest festival of Samhain. I wrote of how the Church affirms and assimilates all that is good and true and beautiful in every culture with which it comes into contact. But if this principal, called "inculturation" be true, it necessarily posits a corollary: the Church emphatically rejects all that is not good and true and beautiful in a culture.

Thus, even as the the Christian missionaries to Ireland affirmed the people's veneration for motherhood and fertility in the cult of the goddess Brigid, they insisted that there is only one God, not many, and He is not a mother, but the Creator of motherhood. It is appropriate, therefore, that Saint Brigid, foundress of one of Ireland's most ancient monasteries, shares a name with the old goddess. For Brigid was a mother to the community of which she was abbess, having influence over even bishops and chieftains, a patroness of literature and the arts, and a revered spiritual teacher. It is also appropriate that her feast (February 1) falls on the same day as the festival of the old goddess (Imbolc), for the cult of the saint replaces that of the goddess; the shadows of superstition are replaced by the pure light of Faith. Brigid, like all the great saints, is a light that points beyond herself to a higher Light.

This Light is the "light to the nations" (Luke 2:32) that the prophet Simeon greeted in the Temple. This Light is the Son of God who became like man in all things, except sin. Here again, in the person of Jesus Christ, we see the theme of assimilation and rejection. For Christ, possessive of a divine nature, takes upon Himself a human nature. He assimilates everything that is good and true and beautiful in human nature, while emphatically rejecting that which is not, namely sin.

So let us not confuse true religion with false religion, as if it were all-of-a-piece. There are many points of contact between Christianity and the many cults of the world, and these should be celebrated. But when God becomes man in the person of Jesus Christ, something occurs that is genuinely new and unique in the history of mankind. And this Jesus Christ compels a choice; He "calls us out of darkness and into his own marvelous light" (1 Pet 2:9).

St. Brigid of Kildare, show us the light of true Faith!