“The sacred treasury of God’s holy glory, the greatly precious bridal chamber and Virgin, the Savior’s most pure temple free of stain and undefiled, into the House of the Lord on this day is brought forward and bringeth with herself the grace of the Most Divine Spirit; her do God’s Angels hymn with songs of praise, for she is truly the heavenly tabernacle.”

This is the Kontakion hymn of this feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple. It speaks volumes about how we understand not just the event that we’re celebrating, but how we understand our salvation. The Virgin Mary is brought to the Temple by her parents, Joachim and Anna, at the tender age of 3. This is to fulfill the vow they had made, that if God gave them a child, they would dedicate her to Him. But all of this was ordained and arranged by God for our salvation. She was chosen by Him to be the “sacred treasury of God’s holy glory.” And so it was fitting for her who was to be the true, living Temple of God, to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem, and to be raised in the Holy of Holies as a dedicated offering to Him.

So on this day she is brought to the Temple. According to the Protoevangelion of St. James, she is accompanied in procession by the young virgins, girls bearing lamps, which is why we have the tradition of having the girls accompany the procession and receive a blessing on this feast. This was in fact a fulfillment of what the Prophet David said in Psalm 44: “The virgins that follow after her shall be brought unto the King, those near her shall be brought unto Thee. They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing, they shall be brought into the temple of the King.” The girls accompanying the procession are symbolic of each of us baptized Christians who are called to be purified, and to bear the light of Christ and to follow the Virgin Mary into the heavenly Tabernacle.

But what does Prophet David say to the chosen Virgin herself in the same Psalm? He says, “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear; and forget thine own people and thy father’s house. And the King shall greatly desire thy beauty.” In other words, O Virgin child, Queen destined to stand at the right hand of the Lord, it is time to separate from your parents because the King of All has chosen you for himself. He is going to prepare your beauty to shine for the whole world. He is preparing you to be a pure, fitting Temple for Himself. You are going to be His dwelling place. And for this reason, as David says again, “I shall commemorate thy name in every generation and generation.”

Yet it isn’t just for her sake that she’s chosen. The Word of God will come to dwell in her in order to save all of Creation. In one of the hymns from Vespers of this feast, it says that she “is truly the holiest temple of our Holy God, Who by dwelling Himself in her cleansed and sanctified all creation, and He hath deified the very nature of us mortals, though it had fallen away from Him.”

In other words, this is what is happening today: this 3-year-old child, Mary, is being brought to the Holy of Holies in the Temple to be prepared to become herself the Holy of Holies, the living Temple that will contain the living God. And when He dwells within her, He makes not only her His dwelling place, but us as well.

In the epistle to the Hebrews, we hear that the Old Testament Temple had the Holy of Holies, and the High Priest went once a year and offered a bloody sacrifice there on behalf of the people. But when the Virgin Theotokos becomes the living Holy of Holies, it is Christ who is the High Priest, who comes one time, bearing Himself, and His own blood, as the sacrifice on our behalf. This wonderful reality is prepared and foreshadowed on this feast. And we celebrate not only the Mother of God’s calling to be a Temple, but our own calling to be Temples of God, and to dwell in the Heavenly Holy of Holies.

In the service of preparation for communion, we pray, “O Lord, who wast born of the Virgin, turn away from my transgressions, and purify my heart, making it a temple of thine immaculate Body and Blood…” It was to open up the possibility of ourselves being Temples in which Christ the Word of God dwells, that we might abide in Him and He is us, that the Virgin Mary was led to the Temple, and dwelt there, and became the Mother of God. St. Gregory Palamas says this in his homily for this feast: “She was led into the Holy of Holies not just once, but was accepted by God to dwell there with Him during Her youth, so that through Her, the Heavenly Abodes might be opened and given for an eternal habitation to those who believe in Her miraculous birthgiving.”

He goes on to conclude that we who have received our purification and sanctification through her, and who behold her on this feast as a “Treasure of God,” stored for a time in the Temple in Jerusalem, and who recognize that Christ has glorified her as His Mother, must honor and thank her and praise her as the Mother of our salvation. And we don’t end simply with praising her, but we honor her by following her example, as far as we are able, by God’s grace.

Thus St. Gregory says, “let us change our desire from temporal things to those that endure…Let us scorn fleshly delights….let us desire spiritual gifts…Let us turn our reason and our attention from earthly concerns and raise them to the inaccessible places of Heaven, to the Holy of Holies, where the Mother of God now resides. Therefore, in such manner our songs and prayers to Her will gain entry, and thus through her mediation, we shall be heirs of the everlasting blessings to come, through the grace and love for mankind of Him Who was born of Her for our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory, honor and worship, together with His Unoriginate Father and His Coeternal and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.”