Two feasts to take to heart

As we move into the month of February, by design the shortest month of the calendar year in the number of days, there are some beautiful feasts and memorials which the Church celebrates. I would like to mention two feasts that hold much for Catholics to celebrate and to take to heart in our daily lives.
 
The Feast of the Presentation is celebrated on February 2 and the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter is celebrated on February 22. Perhaps the better known of these feasts is that of the Presentation.  This commemorates the moment in Our Infant Lord’s life when Our Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph take Him to the Temple to fulfill the requirements of the Mosaic Law regarding a first-born male child. In fact, this moment in Our Lord’s life is commemorated and prayed about in the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary.
 
Even at this early date in the Lord’s life and then throughout the rest of His earthly life, He came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill and perfect them. However, it is at the moment of the Presentation that we meet the holy Simeon and Anna, both prophets, who not only are blessed to behold the Messiah but to touch Him and begin to tell others of Him. Finally, it is at this moment when Our Blessed Mother is told by Simeon under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that she is to participate in the Lord’s Passion and suffer as well.
 
If you are able, please participate at Holy Mass on this feast. Listen prayerfully to the proper prayers for the feast and to the readings. The Church asks us to accompany the Holy Family and by our own prayers, good works and sacrifices do what Mary and Joseph did—faithfully follow Jesus and faithfully show Him to others as our Lord and theirs.
 
The Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter obtains its name from the fact that Saint Peter was the head of the Christian Community and Church in Antioch before he went to Rome where he organized the first Christian Community there with Saint Paul, and over which he then presided as Pope. The chair is the chair or seat from which Saint Peter and all bishops teach the Catholic faith and, it has a public and prominent place in the Cathedral. While the chair is real it is not the chair which we honor but what the chair represents—the teaching, sanctifying and shepherding authority of Jesus which He gave over to His Apostles and their successors for the good of the Church and the world.
 
Again, if you are able, please participate at Holy Mass on this feast. It is a visible sign of our communion with the successor of Saint Peter, but more it is a visible sign of our faith in and communion with our Divine Founder and Head as members of His Body, the Church. We profess our faith in His Church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic and thus in Him Who has established us as His people in His Church. This feast is a good way for us to pray and meditate on our faith and examine how we put it into practice in the Church from which we receive the sacraments of our salvation.