Great Twelve feast
Meeting of the Lord
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Послабление поста: Fish allowed
The Slavonic name of this feast means meeting. Two people meet: a forty-day-old child and a very old man with a whole age of waiting behind him.
The law of Moses required a mother to bring her firstborn to the temple on the fortieth day with an offering: a lamb, or, for a poor family, two turtledoves. Mary brought the doves. In the temple she was met by the elder Simeon. Tradition says that long before, translating the Scriptures into Greek, he had come to the prophecy a virgin shall conceive and wanted to correct virgin to young woman — and was told he would not die until he saw it fulfilled with his own eyes.
He waited for decades. Now the old man takes the Child in his arms and says the words sung at every vespers since: Now let Your servant depart in peace, O Master, according to Your word. Then he turns to the Mother: and a sword shall pierce your own soul also — the first prophecy of Golgotha, spoken over an infant.
What the feast is about
In the temple the Old Testament meets the New: a time that spent its whole life waiting, and a time that has arrived and can be held in one's arms. It is also a feast about old age — about a lifetime of waiting that turns out not to have been in vain.
How it is kept
February 15 (February 2 on the old calendar), the fortieth day after the Nativity. When it falls on a Wednesday or Friday the fast is relaxed to fish. In some churches candles are blessed on this day, a custom that came from the Orthodox West.
Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos, full of grace, for from you shone forth the Sun of Righteousness, Christ our God, enlightening those who sat in darkness. Rejoice also, O righteous Elder, for you received in your arms the Redeemer of our souls, who grants us the resurrection.