Meeting of the Lord (Hypapante): February 2

Forty days after the Nativity the Theotokos brings the Child to the Temple, and the elder Symeon, to whom it had been promised that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ, takes God into his arms. The Greek name is Hypapante, the Meeting: the Law meets its Giver, the Temple receives the One it was built for, and the age that had been waiting is free to depart in peace. Symeon’s words at that moment are not kept for this day alone. They close Vespers every evening of the year, so the whole Church says them nightly. Anna the prophetess, eighty-four years a widow in the Temple, is the second witness. The Latin name for the day, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, puts the weight on a purification the all-pure Theotokos had no need of; the Orthodox name keeps it on the Meeting itself, and the feast is reckoned among the feasts of the Lord. Kept on 2 February, with its leavetaking on 9 February, and the last of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church year to be given a page here.