On November 21, we Orthodox celebrate one of the most beautiful feasts of the liturgical year: the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple. But before we speak of this little girl walking up the temple steps, we must first stand in awe of the terrifying holiness of the place she entered.
Imagine a tent in the desert, or later a magnificent stone temple in Jerusalem, where the living God chose to dwell among men. The Ark of the Covenant sat at its heart—gold overlaid wood containing the tablets of the Law, the jar of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded (which affirmed the legitimacy of his priesthood).
Over it rested the mercy seat, and there, between the cherubim, the Glory of the Lord appeared. Scripture tells us that when the cloud of God’s presence filled the tabernacle, even Moses could not enter (Exodus 40:35). When Solomon dedicated the temple, the priests could not stand to minister because the Glory filled the house, and fire came down from heaven (2 Chronicles 7:1–3).
An ancient Jewish tradition was that the Temple stood at the physical and spiritual center of the world, and the foundation stone upon which the Ark rested in the Holy of Holies was the very center of the entire cosmos. From this place, God created the whole world, with the world emanating from this holy point like the fountainhead of a spring.
Obviously, the Temple was not a museum of religion. This was holiness so pure – so concentrated – that it was lethal to anything sinful.
Touch the Ark and you die.
Look into it improperly and you die.
Offer unauthorized worship and you die.
Remember Uzzah— he had good intentions, steadying the Ark when the oxen stumbled—and yet the Lord struck him dead on the spot (2 Samuel 6).
Remember Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, who offered strange fire, and fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them (Leviticus 10).
Remember the men of Beth-shemesh who gazed into the Ark and were struck down—70 men, or in some manuscripts 5,070—until the survivors cried, “Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God?” (1 Samuel 6).
The sons of Kohath carried the Ark but were forbidden even to touch the holy things, lest they die (Numbers 4:15). The poles were never to be removed. The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, by one man, the high priest, and never without blood. One mistake, one presumption, and death was immediate. We see a message clear and bold: God is holy, and we sinful men cannot approach Him on our own terms.
And yet… on a quiet day in Jerusalem, according to our ancient tradition, a three-year-old girl was brought to the temple by her parents Joachim and Anna. They had promised her to God, and now they fulfilled their vow. The priests received her. The high priest—tradition says Zechariah, the future father of John the Baptist—met her at the steps. And then something unimaginable happened.
He took her by the hand and led her—not just into the court of the women, not just into the Holy Place, but all the way into the Holy of Holies itself.
A child.
A girl.
Into the place where no one but the high priest could go, and he only once a year with blood.
The temple — which so many people believed was the pinnacle of God’s holiness here on earth — this temple had waited a thousand years for the fullness of its meaning to come. And because God likes to use the “weak things of this world to confound the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27), the ultimate meaning of the temple would be found in this three-year old girl. She was not just entering the Holy of Holies — she was to be the Holy of Holies. The building was an incomplete shadow of what it was meant to be for so many centuries while it waited for her arrival.
And so, tradition tells us that she dwelt for years in the Holy of Holies, being fed the bread of angels while she dwelt there. Some people get caught up in historicity and lose the meaning of the feast. They want to debate whether or not the Jewish priests would have really allowed the young Mary into such a holy place. But this is missing the point of what the Church desires to teach us. Whether or not it is historically true that the child Mary lived in the Holy of Holies is asking the wrong question.
Instead, we should ask, “What is the Church trying to show us? What is this young girl to become?” And when we grasp the truth, it’s no longer a matter of her being allowed in the Holy of Holies, but whether such a place was even worthy of her presence.
A young maiden, dwelling in the Holy of Holies, at the very center of the cosmos, being fed with the bread of angels, uniting her entire being to God in quiet, contemplative prayer. And from her womb, that is the very center of this woman who sat in the center of the cosmos, would emanate the Healer of the universe.
Now, let’s fast forward a few years: in a small town called Nazareth, the archangel Gabriel came to this same girl – now a young woman of twelve years or so in age – and said: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35).
Those of us who have grown up Christian have heard or read that phrase for years. But what’s not evident in English is that the word “overshadow” (ἐπισκιάζω) used in the Gospel of Luke is not accidental. In the Greek Septuagint, it is the very same verb used when the Glory-cloud (the Shekinah glory) overshadowed the tabernacle, and the Glory of God filled it so completely that Moses could not enter. It’s also the same word used to describe the cloud of glory which signifies the presence of the Father at the Transfiguration of Christ (Matt. 17:5, Mk. 9:7, Lk. 9:34). The Shekinah that once rested on gold and acacia wood now rested upon a young woman. The uncontainable God pitched His tent, not in a building made by hands, but in the living tabernacle of her womb.
She became both the true Temple and the true Ark of the covenant.
While the Ark of the old covenant contained the word of God written on stone – she contained the Word of God made flesh.
The old Ark held manna – she carried the Bread of Life.
The old Ark had Aaron’s rod – she bore the eternal High Priest.
And because the living God had made her body His dwelling place, no man after Him would ever enter there. If Uzzah died for touching the wood of the old Ark, how could any man presume to claim for himself she whom God had made His own throne? Her ever-virginity is not a bit of pious silliness – it is a theological necessity. The burning bush was not consumed by the fire of divinity (which had consumed so many people in the Old Testament), and neither was she consumed. The eastern gate through which the Lord entered, says Ezekiel, remains shut forever (Ezekiel 44:2). She is the Eastern Gate, through which only God may pass.
This is what our present Feast proclaims with trumpets of incense and joyous praise: the prelude of God’s good will, the heralding of the salvation of mankind. The Virgin is presented openly in the temple of God, and in her Christ is proclaimed to all. The centuries old temple reached its fulfillment when the true Temple walked into it at the age of three.
But the story does not end with her.
When her Son died on the Cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The old Holy of Holies was seen by all men to be empty. For God had something even greater in mind. Now, by water and Spirit, all of His followers may strive toward becoming what she became: a temple of God.
Not only is this a possibility, it is a command, a necessity. Every one of us is called to become what she became by grace in unsurpassable fullness: a temple of the living God.
“Do you not know,” asks St. Paul, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
We are to become little arks carrying the Word (the eternal Logos) within us.
We are to be little tabernacles where the Bread of Life dwells.
Walking Holy of Holies where the Shekinah desires to rest.
But we must cooperate with God – He will not force Himself on us.
Mary is the prototype. Her “yes” must also be our “yes.”
She is the first human being since the Fall whose humanity was entirely at the service of God, whose yes was so complete that God made His home in her forever.
And now He wants to make His home in us.
So, as we sing “Today is the prelude of the good will of God…” let us remember that the feast is not only about her – it is about us. She entered the temple so that one day we might become temples. She became the dwelling place of God so that we, through her Son and by the Holy Spirit, might become dwelling places of God.
May the All-Holy Theotokos, more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, teach us to say yes as she did. May her prayers make us also arks of the New Covenant, temples of the Holy Spirit, living icons of the God who once dwelt in a tent in the wilderness and now desires to dwell in the wilderness of our hearts.
Icon credit: Entry into Temple Theotokos by Monica Vasiloaia of Romania