At Candlemas, the church remembers the infant Christ being presented in the Temple in Jerusalem to the old man Simeon who rejoices that, before he dies, he has seen this child, who will be ‘a light to the nations’. But this feast of Candlemas, celebrated by the lighting and extinguishing of candles (hence its name), is a bittersweet feast, for the old man also warns the child’s mother of the pain and suffering she is to face because of her Son. So Candlemas looks backwards to the birth of the child and the joy of Christmas, but also forwards to the suffering and death on the cross.