That Day Mary Was Presented at the Temple When She Was Three Years Old?

If you’re a life-long Protestant like me, you may have never heard of the “Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of Our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos (“God-bearer”).”

It’s one of the twelve major feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and it marks the beginning of Advent season. We’re nearly a month past the feast celebration now (Nov. 21), but, hey, better late than never maybe.

The feast celebrates a story which comes to us, not from the New Testament gospels, but from the Apocryphal text of the Gospel of James (often called the Protoevanglium). It proposes to tell us the story of Mary, prior to the gospels’ telling of her encounter with the angel Gabriel and her agreement to give birth to Jesus.

An Orthodox website tells the story well. Here’s a bit of that:

When Mary was three years old, Joachim and Anna decided that the time had come to fulfill their promise and to offer her to the Lord. Joachim gathered the young girls of the neighborhood to form an escort, and he made them go in front of Mary, carrying torches. Captivated by the torches, the young child followed joyfully to the Temple, not once looking back at her parents nor weeping as she was parted from them.

The holy Virgin ran toward the Temple, overtaking her attendant maidens and threw herself into the arms of the High Priest Zacharias, who was waiting for her at the gate of the Temple with the elders. Zacharias blessed her saying, “It is in you that He has glorified your name in every generation. It is in you that He will reveal the Redemption that He has prepared for His people in the last days.”

Then, Zacharias brought the child into the Holy of Holies—a place where only the High Priest was permitted to enter once a year on the Day of Atonement. He placed her on the steps of the altar, and the grace of the Lord descended upon her. She arose and expressed her joy in a dance as wonder seized all who saw this happen.

The Virgin Mary dwelt in the Temple for nine years until, reaching an age for marriage, she was taken from the Temple by the priests and elders and entrusted to Joseph as the guardian of her virginity.

The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple signifies her total dedication to God and her readiness for her future vocation as the Mother of the Incarnate Lord. This is a feast of anticipation. As honor is shown to Mary, the faithful are called to look forward to the Incarnation of Christ, celebrated in a little more than a month by the Feast of the Nativity on December 25.

And here is a song that is sung in celebration of the occasion, in honor of Mary:

Today is the prelude of God’s pleasure and the proclamation of man’s salvation. The Virgin is clearly made manifest in the temple of God and foretells Christ to all. Let us also cry out to her with mighty voice, “Hail, fulfillment of the Creator’s dispensation.

Fascinating stuff. And it is, of course, the stuff of tradition. And as a unashamed Protestant, I readily admit that this is all up for vigorous critical evaluation, but it’s theologically quite interesting when you dig deep down into these extra-canonical stories. They are surely more mythological than historically accurate, but intriguing to the theological imagination nonetheless.

Do these stories shed light on our understanding of Mary? On advent hope?

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