Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also called Candlemas. This feast, which for a long time was called the "Purification of Mary", is both a feast of the Lord and of his Mother. The Presentation of the child in the Temple was not a rite prescribed by the Mosaic law, unlike the purification of his mother; a pious practice, the parents of Jesus made it their own.

In the 4th century this feast was celebrated in Jerusalem as the meeting of Simeon with the infant Jesus (hence its name Hypapante – meeting). In the 6th century Justinian brought the feast to Constantinople. In the 7th century it was celebrated in Rome with a nocturnal procession with candles, symbolising the pilgrimage of Joseph and Mary from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to present the child (where it took on penitential overtones). In the 8th century it became a Marian feast. Mary, like all women who grew up within the Jewish tradition, must purify herself, and by extension her child, 40 days after giving birth. And finally, in the 10th century, the blessing of candles was added, which earned it the name of Candlemas.

To commemorate this feast, we have chosen the Offertory. The text taken from Psalm 47 is a wedding song in which the bride sings to the bridegroom. Verse 3, found at the beginning of the bride's song, is addressed to the divine Child smiling in his mother's arms or in the hands of the aged Simeon: they are the ones who sing and, with them, the Church that joins them. The Church is enchanted, enraptured by the beauty of the Child God presented to her.

The melody composed in mode 8 is a contemplation rather than an external praise. The soul remains fixed, as if enraptured in admiration; note the broad unison developments on C, the dominant of the mode, throughout the piece. But behind this stillness of ecstasy, there is a vibration of ardour that can be felt throughout. It is this ardour that rises from the first notes to the insistent A of Diffusa est, and which is clearly manifested in gratia, the word of beauty. After a graceful curve at the preposition in, it rises again and puts an accent of vibrant tenderness on the dystrophes and the pulsations of labiis tuis.

The second and third sentences are somewhat different. It is the Father's blessing that is evoked, his admiration, his own pride in his beloved Son. The melody soars high. The C, the dominant of the piece, is omnipresent, the melody only leaves it for a few flourishes, a few flutters, as if the evocation of the Word, the Splendour of the Father, transports, above any movement of ideas, feelings, to the peace that is beyond all. The melody takes flight in a sublime way at in aeternum, the melodic summit of this Offertory, to sing of eternity, and its cadence in F to mark a detente, but this flight, which extends over time, space, the world, everything that moves and changes, is resumed at in saecula saeculorum, until the final cadence of this chant, which seems not to want to end.