Candlemas Day is on the Horizon.
Septuagesima is even closer.
Most of the world knows it as Groundhog Day, and in the United States many pay attention to the Freemasonic Punxsutawney Phil. But for real Catholics, February 2nd is forty days after Christmas, and commemorates the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple as per the Mosaic Law. This is also the occasion of the First Sorrow of Our Lady, prompted by the Prophecy of Simeon, who said that "This Child is a Sign that Shall be Contradicted, and Your Own Heart, a Sword Shall Pierce". (And is still piercing, as Our Lord related to St Sr Lucia at the Apparition of Pontevedra in 1925.) For this Wolf, this feast day has become even bigger than Christmas, fleshing out the Incarnation in many of its aspects, both in Our Lord and Our Lady.
The Blessed Virgin Mary was probably quite apprehensive as she approached the Temple in Jerusalem. She had no misgivings or pretensions about the evil of the place. The spiritual stench of worldliness and corruption surely reached her spiritual nostrils, nourished as they were by a continuous spirit of prayer and affinity with the Grace of God and the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
[What makes Our Lady so incredible was not that She was Supergirl, as many Semi-Anti-Arian priests seem to believe. Neither she nor Our Lord Jesus Christ were born with the Integrity or Impassibility of Adam before the Fall, but had those three wounds of the Original Sin on their soul, Our Lady having inherited those effects from Anne and Joachim, who were her true parents, though she inherited not Original Sin. (St Thomas Aquinas would struggle mightily with this.) Our Lady COULD have experienced detestable movements of the flesh, but did not, because her will was always perfectly oriented to God, and detested the spirit of this world and the concupiscence thereof. Every inclination to sin she conquered, perfectly, given neither to overemphasis of fallen nature to the consideration that matter is evil nor excusing inclinations as we are so wont to do. And of course her close friends and mentors, particularly St Anne and St Elizabeth, must have been extraordinary women, who taught her all the Wisdom of Solomon as contained in Ecclesiasticus. Alas for us, that we almost universally have parents who do not teach us aright, let alone always give us good example by being constantly immersed in a spirit of prayer, a love of poverty, and an inclination to mortification.]
The Epiphany was still in the future. (This Wolf believes that the Star the Three Kings saw arose when Our Lord was Born, and they came to Bethlehem One Year and Twelve Days after Our Lord was born, stayed a few weeks, and then returned to their homeland. And of course Our Lord was taken to Egypt, in the dead of that winter. And some time, about six months, elapsed before King Herod realized the Kings were not returning to him. Then he issued his nefarious order, which was carried out the following Christmas, so that all children two years old and under were slain, as to the time ascertained by the priests, probably after having consulted with some of the shepherds who saw the majestic vision of the angels that Holy Night. Oh, poor Herod. If he really thought Our Lord was coming to immediately restore the Davidic Kingdom, and had consulted the prophecies of Isaiah... All that gold from the Dromedaries of Arabia- that must be an awful lot. He was already the vassal of Rome. Why not be the vassal of Our Lord? Surely, materially, he would have been a lot better off, and need not sacrifice anything... but such are the delusions of those steeped in sin and worldliness...) Probably not much had happened since the Nativity. The shepherds had perhaps found better lodgings for the Holy Family in Bethlehem, and St Joseph was staying there. But today they fulfilled the law, not at the behest of St Joseph, who by this time had learned to defer to Our Lady in all things spiritual, having recognized her extraordinary wisdom and her constant devotion to prayer, but by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by way of Our Lady. Surely Our Lady knew of all the prophecies of Isaiah and how Her Son would be opposed. And so not with a little trepidation did she enter the lair of the apostates.
Being poor, they have two turtle doves to ransom their Firstborn Son. Imagine that. The Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Divine Essence and Plentitude of Being, God of God and Light of Light, is subject to His own law, not merely the natural law, but the law imposed on fallen men by the Old Covenant. Our Lady must be astounded by this humility, just as She was astounded that He would submit to the edicts of Caesar. But Our Lord came not to be served, materially speaking, but to serve, an office he bequeathed to His successors the Priests of the New Covenant- and how poorly and pathetically they have performed that office down through the ages, preferring rather that their dignity be an excuse to arrogate honors to themselves. Oh how they are about to be severely punished- nay, are being punished by blindness and hardness of heart- for this impudence! Having fallen short of the requirements of their grand vocation, they are subjected to the most perverse temptations against chastity, and have fallen into the grossest and most unspeakable of vicious habits.
Our Lady should be the example for every virtuous woman. She should be keenly aware of the beauty with which God has lavished her, and is a source of so many temptations to men. (Here I would like to make a special note concerning the depravity of modern society. Female strippers are probably as old as the hills. But what has become widespread over the years are the male strippers, catering to female audiences. Women who engage in this are especially depraved, behaving and acting like men, who are more easily aroused and become vicious. These women then graduate to even greater sins, which will not be mentioned here.) The truly modest woman, far from using her beauty as a means to secure selfish desires born of lack of trust in the providence of God, is careful to clothe herself in such a way that she will not tempt even the weakest of men, even if this offends the mores of society. (This Wolf truly doubts one woman is in hell because she dressed like the Amish.)
Candlemas Day is also referred to as the Day of the Purification of Our Lady following childbirth. Our Lady, of course, needed no purification. Neither the Incarnation nor the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ was a fleshy or earthy affair. But Our Lady still had to struggle mightily to remain on that "spiritual cloud", and that continuously. And that she did, never shrinking in the least from the Spirit of the Cross, the Spirit of Abnegation, and the generous spirit of wanting to sacrifice and suffer for the salvation of souls, recognizing this as the Divine Economy to give reparation to the Infinite Justice of God. For even Our Lady was dependent upon the Sacrifice of the Cross, being, herself, a finite creature. And no creature was ever more aware of its utter nothingness.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us. You are our only hope!