Homily: The presentation of the Theotokos

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, One God!  Amen.

Our Father in heaven is the God of promise.  Our Patriarch Abraham grew old, and his wife was barren.  When he was one hundred years old, and his wife Sarah was 90, God promised him a child, and it was made so.  They conceived, and their son Isaac was born. Later, the son Isaac, because he also was childless, prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant and gave birth to twins, Jacob and Esau. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the great patriarchs of our faith.  God first made his promise with Abraham: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing,” and later he would say “’Look up at the sky and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.”  Isaac was the son of the covenant made with Abraham, and therefore a stepping stone or bridge to the fulfillment of that promise.  He represented a continuation of that promise by God.  Then, Jacob would follow after to become the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise, his twelve sons becoming the twelve tribes of Israel. From one of these twelve tribes the messiah would arise as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

Abraham prefigures the Father’s love for his son, and offers a foreshadowing by nearly sacrificing his son Isaac, and on the same mountain Christ would be crucified.  Isaac, who was nearly sacrificed by his father, is a prefiguration of Christ.  Jacob, who wrestled with an angel for a night, portrays the greatest struggle of anyone’s faith: “recognizing God and figuring out what to do with that knowledge, wrestling and embracing God’s will.” Yet, what of the once barren wives of these great patriarchs? The Fathers of the Church are in agreement that the opening of the barren womb of these high esteemed and virtuous women are all a prefiguration of the Virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.  So we circle back to Jacob and his miraculous vision, where he dreamed “and beheld a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.”  Jacob’s ladder, as it has become known, has been identified in Eastern Orthodox theology and iconography with the incarnation of Christ through Mary.

So, we come to the parents of the Virgin Mary, who, like so many before them, were old and without child.  While the entirety of the old testament points forward to Christ, they are not mentioned here.  Neither are they mentioned in the annals of the new testament.  Their lives, conception, and the presentation of the Theotokos to the temple, which we commemorate, all flows from the living Tradition and memory of the Church.

According to the Tradition of the Church, Joachim and Anna had been married for fifty years, and during that time remained barren and without a child.  Despite this and their longing for a child, they lived quiet and devout lives.  They only lived on one third of their income, giving the other two thirds to the poor and to the temple.  For their faith, they had been well provided for. Yet, despite their faith, and because of their barrenness, they were chided and ridiculed by the other Jews.  Even the high priest had scolded him by saying, “You are not worthy to offer sacrifice with those childless hands.” They were treated and deemed as unworthy.  So, the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna gave themselves to prayer that God would work in them the same wonder he worked in Abraham and Sarah, and bless them with a child that they may be assuaged in their old age.  God sent the archangel Gabriel to each of them and announced to them “a daughter most blessed, by whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed, and through whom will come the salvation of the world.”  At this new promise of God, the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna in turn promised to raise their child in the Temple as a holy vessel of God.

At the age of three, Joachim and Anna took their daughter, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the temple to be dedicated to the service of God. They processed from Nazareth to Jerusalem, a three day journey.  The procession was led by virgins holding lighted tapers, with the Blessed Virgin Mary flanked and accompanied by her parents. Following them were kinsman, family, and friends all bearing lighted tapers.  Fifteen steps ascended to the temple in Jerusalem, and when the procession arrived at their destination, the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna lifted the Blessed Virgin Mary onto the first step, then she quickly ascended the remaining steps on her own. At the top of the steps she was greeted by the High Priest Zacharias, who was destined to be the father of Saint John the Forerunner.  He took her by the hand and led her into the temple, and then into the Holy of Holies, a place into which only the High Priest ventured, and that but once a year.

Today, she who would become the Holy of Holies, her womb destined to bear the fullness of the living God, enters the Holy of Holies.  She who is more honorable then the cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, makes more holy the holy of Holies by her very presence.

Today, she who is to become the ark of the new covenant, one day giving birth to the living law of the spirit of life, is presented to  the ark of the old covenant.  The law which brings death will soon give way to the law which brings life life.

Today, the Blessed Virgin Mary enters the Temple as a golden censer, destined to contain within her Christ the coal of fire, whom Holy Isaiah foresaw. Her prayers will one day rise like incense before all the saints, and for all the saints.

Today is the preview of the good will of God, of the preaching of the salvation of mankind. The Virgin appears in the temple of God, in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all. Let us rejoice and sing to her: Rejoice, O Divine Fulfillment of the Creator’s dispensation. (Troparion)

[Today] The most pure Temple of the Savior; The precious Chamber and Virgin; The sacred Treasure of the glory of God, Is presented today to the house of the Lord. She brings with her the grace of the Spirit, Therefore, the angels of God praise her: “Truly this woman is the abode of heaven.” (Kontakion)

Today we celebrate the end of the physical temple in Jerusalem as the all holy dwelling place of God. The presentation of the Theotokos – she who would bear the fullness of God within her – offers a prelude and preview to the good will of God.  We celebrate Christ’s mother that we too are worthy to be an abode for, and living tabernacles of the Lord.

Today we venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary as a prefiguration of Christian life.  Just as Abraham was the first to have faith in God, The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to have faith in Christ, He who took flesh from her flesh, and from her womb the Son of God became the Son of Man.  She epitomizes obedience, when at the annunciation of Christ she proclaimed “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be done to me according to the word.” This is in spite of her desire to remain a virgin until her death, but her virginity would remain intact, and her faith remembered, rewarded, and exalted. She was a person of prayer.  Raised in the Temple, she was rooted in a life of unceasing prayer.  Without this kind prayer upon her heart she would not have been equipped to deal with the level of communion and contact with God that only she was especially prepared to experience and comprehend. She is a person who embodies forgiveness, who as a mother chose to forgive rather than hate when she witnessed the unjust persecution and execution of her son upon the cross.  She is the great example, the prelude to Christian life.

May the following weeks of this great fast of the Nativity season be a prelude and preparation for us to receive Christ as we step into the joyous occasion of His Nativity.  As we remember the Blessed Virgin Mary’s entrance into the Temple, may we prepare ourselves that Christ may enter into us as living temples of the living God; living tabernacles of the Holy Spirit.  My prayer for us all is that we will use this time wisely, seeking out that which is most needful in our lives, while avoiding the anger and anxiety of our society, and not becoming poisoned and polluted by the spirit of our age.  There is surely nothing more important that we could do for the salvation of the world, for the benefit and healing of our souls, and in preparation for the joy of Christmas.

By the prayers of thy most puer mother, the Holy and God bearing Father, all the saints, the martyrs, and the angels, have mercy on us and save us.

Amen.