We may overlook the pervasive significance of candles in our spiritual lives. Where would we be without them? We have the Paschal Candle present throughout the Easter Season and baptisms, the slender candles of the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady’s chapels always available, the six candles on the altar. We have the singular candle for St. Nicholas, lit just one day each year, amidst the growing darkness of December. We have the array at the Lourdes grotto, its candles emblematic of the original site, where Bernadette could touch the flame unburned. The typical practice of lectio for the Manquehue Movement is to accompany the prayer with a candle.

We even have a Mass uniquely incorporating a Blessing of Candles. On Tuesday, February 2, the Feast of the Presentation, conventual Mass began with this blessing, with a distinctive display of various candles visible in our sanctuary. Were the weather more amenable, the procession might have been incorporated, evoking the journey to the temple of the Holy Family. Adding to the illumination were the eight candles of the hoopla surrounding the sanctuary’s statue of Our Lady in her side chapel, lit in honor of this fourth of the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary. Prior Michael offered the following prescribed prayer, followed by the sprinkling with holy water:

Dear brothers and sisters, forty days have passed since we celebrated the joyful feast of the Nativity of the Lord. Today is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph. Outwardly he was fulfilling the Law, but in relation he was coming to meet his believing people. Prompted by the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna came to the Temple. Enlightened by the same Spirit, they recognized the Lord and confessed him with exultation. So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find him and recognize him in the breaking of the bread, until he comes again, revealed in glory. After the address the Priest blesses the candles, saying, with hands extended: Let us pray. O God, source and origin of all light, who on this day showed to the just man Simeon the Light for revelation to the Gentiles, we humbly ask that, in answer to your people's prayers, you may be pleased to sanctify with your blessing + these candles, which we are eager to carry in praise of your name, so that, treading the path of virtue, we may reach that light which never fails. Through Christ our Lord.

Brothers Benedict and Sixtus helped to put together the display and to integrate the blessing into the morning’s liturgy. While the practice of incorporating the blessing into the Mass on this feast has been sporadic in our community, the St. Louis monks have practiced it regularly, particularly when it coincides with a Friday morning School Mass. Brother Sixtus remembers that his childhood parish traditionally distributed two blessed candles of beeswax to each family - gratitude for the work of bees is expressed in the Exsultet’s proclamation of the Easter Vigil.