A HOMILY FOR THE GREAT FEAST OF THE ENTRY OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS INTO THE TEMPLE
About the Theotokos’ Life in the Temple and Ours
(Nov. 21/Dec. 4)
Brothers and sisters!
Today we celebrate the entry into the Old Testament temple of a three-year old maiden, the only child of Saints Joachim and Anna, the Most Holy Virgin Mary.
Soon after Mary’s third birthday, her parents fulfilled the vow they had made while praying for a child, promising to dedicate her to the Lord’s service. When the appointed day arrived, numerous relatives of the saints assembled in Nazareth, and the extended family and others set off for Jerusalem. Young Mary was accompanied by additional, somewhat older virgins, who carried lamps and chanted psalms. When the procession reached the Holy City, it astonished the Jerusalemites, and many of them joined it. At the outer court of the temple, the procession was met by a multitude of priests. The holy Virgin hurried up the fifteen steps leading to the great doorway of the building proper, assisted by God’s angels, but supported by no human hand. As she entered, the High Priest Zacharias greeted her and accompanied her into the Holy Place and then into the Holy of Holies. This area of the building was inaccessible not only to ordinary Jews, but to the High Priest himself, except that he was permitted to go into it once a year to sprinkle it with the blood of a sacrifice.
After this, the Virgin’s parents offered oblations in thanksgiving to God, then left for home, leaving their daughter in the temple in the care of the older maidens who lived there. Here, remote from everything worldly, Mary was gradually prepared to fulfill her calling. She occupied herself with fastings and prayer, handiwork and reading of the word of God. When she wanted to pray and read, she would sometimes return to the Holy of Holies where, in this area inaccessible to all others, she would converse with angels and receive food from them. In this way, the immaculate Virgin passed the years of her childhood and grew up.
Beloved brothers and sisters, as we review in our minds the events our Holy Church celebrates today, we behold with inner eyes the most blessed Maiden Mariam increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.[1] We behold how, little by little, in the temple, she attained such perfection that she was deemed worthy to give birth to the Lord Himself, and we understand how, attending regularly the services in the New Testament temple, we also come gradually unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.[2] But know, dear Christians, that in the beginning, when man was still innocent and holy, there was no need of temples. The Lord appeared visibly to our first parents and spoke with them as with His children, urging them to virtue. Then, however, they sinned, and the Lord deprived them of this vision, expelling them from paradise, because they were not inclined to stop at the first transgression, but increased in pride, self-love, and rebelliousness. Only His saints – Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and others – were subsequently deemed worthy to behold theophanies. Seeking the vision of God, the Lord’s favorites sought out for themselves special places for prayer and communion with Him. And the Lord condescended to the fervent yearning of His saints, appearing to Abraham beneath the Oak of Mamre, to Jacob on a road in a desolate spot, and to Moses on Mount Horeb. Finally, having brought His people out of Egyptian bondage, He ordered Moses to construct a tabernacle for Him – a giant tent – where all the Israelites could draw near to His glorious presence. In course of time Solomon built Him a house,[3] of which God said: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My name there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually.[4] Nevertheless, the people of Israel were unworthy of the great blessing of ready access to God in His house, so Solomon’s temple was eventually destroyed. Although it was rebuilt, the Jews finally advanced so far in iniquity that they slew the Messiah, the Lord of Glory Himself, and so God forsook their temple forever and allowed its final destruction. He took up His abode in the temples of the Christians, which came to be found, not in one city alone, but throughout the world, as Christ predicted to the Samaritan woman. There, as in Solomon’s temple, He abides spiritually; and He also abides physically, in the Holy Eucharist, His true Body and Blood. With Him, angels and saints are invisibly present, so that each of their temples has, for the Orthodox Christians, the New Israelites, the same, or rather, greater significance than did Solomon’s temple for the Israelites of old. Christ’s holy temples are God’s houses, supreme houses of prayer, the places where His mysteries are performed, especially the Mystery of the sacred Eucharist.
And so, dear Christians, if you feel in yourself the need for communion with God, for the vision of Him, for special closeness to Him, come more frequently and with spiritual fervor to His sacred temple. Here you will sense, you will touch the Lord’s presence: you will be filled with the gracious, the mystical, the supernal grace of the Holy Spirit. Here a devout disposition will awaken in you. You will cast off the burden of worldly vanity, and the dark scales covering your inner eyes will fall away. Here the light breeze of Christ’s presence blows steadily. Everything in the Lord’s sacred temple – the chanting, the reading, the actions of the priest, the holy icons – nurtures the soul in our supremely true faith, in hope, and in love; everything in it draws us close to the life beyond the grave and the age to come. Here we feel intensely that we are all children of the one Heavenly Father, that we are brethren in Christ, that we are members of Christ and of His Church, that we are branches of the same Vine, that we are sheep of the same flock of the Good Shepherd, and that we are heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. But the person who neglects attendance in the Lord’s temple little by little and often unnoticed by himself loses the faith, hope, and Christian love so wondrously and magnificently nurtured in the temple by the divine services, sacred Mysteries, and hallowed rites of our Holy Church. He loses the sense that he is, before all else, an Orthodox Christian, a member of Christ and an heir of Christ’s Kingdom. He becomes immersed in the mindset of this world and becomes a carnal person, a plaything of the passions: mindless of his soul, its present lamentable condition, and its gloomy future lot if he fails to repent. He no longer concerns himself with pleasing God, with the result that he hastens to perdition. His prayer grows cold; he ceases to love the Lord’s house; he becomes indifferent to the divine services; he partakes of the Holy Mysteries as a mere formality, not in a heartfelt way; and he fails to struggle against his sins and passions, considering them to be a more or less neutral element of his natural condition. If this continues unchecked, he makes a god out of his own mind, its speculations and opinions; he stops believing in miracles, the narratives of Scripture, and the teachings of the faith; and he begins to deem the Church a merely human institution. In a word, he becomes a pagan in thought, word, and deed, even if he continues to pretend to the name of Christian.
But people who zealously seek Christ the Lord, communion with Him, and the vision of Him, His Most Pure Mother, and the saints, especially in God’s holy temple, do not fall into such coarse and soul-destroying errors, because the Church of Christ constantly enlightens their minds, guides them, corrects them, and strengthens them in Orthodox faith and life through the divine services and the immaculate Mysteries in the holy temple.
And so, brothers and sisters, come to the services in the Lord’s house as frequently as you can. Come to this earthly heaven, to God’s paradise amid the fallen world, in the spirit of contrition and spiritual yearning, with eagerness to change for the better; and Christ will cleanse you and heal you of sin, and He will adorn you with the virtues befitting a Christian. Amen.
[1] Luke 2:52
[2] Eph. 4:13
[3] Acts 7:47
[4] III Kings 9:3
