Homily

Preparing the Temple

The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, November 21^st ,1999

Fr. Josiah Trenham, Pastor

St. Andrew Orthodox Christian Church; Riverside, Ca.

The Entrance of Our Lady Theotokos into the Temple: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. Today the entire Church in heaven and on earth lifts her voice to glorify our Lady’s Holy Entrance into the Temple. Her most pious parents, Ss. Joachim and Anna, had received Mary as a miraculous gift from God in their old age and as an answer to their lifelong prayers, and today they fulfill their mutual vow to give her to God. And so, when Holy Mary was but three years old, her pious parents adorned her in royal garments fit for a queen, called together their relatives and friends, assembled a great throng of young virgins placing lighted tapers in their hands, and made their way to the Temple in Jerusalem from their home in Nazareth. On the third day they reached the Temple precincts. In a great procession, similar to the procession of King David leading the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem one thousand years earlier, Ss. Joachim and Anna escorted the Virgin to the steps of the Temple. There were fifteen large steps at the top of which waited the Priest Zacharias, the Father of St. John the Forerunner. Her parents placed her on the first step, and of her own accord the child Mary ran to the top step. Then St. Zacharias, as if being transported from his normal state of mind and controlled directly by the Holy Spirit, took up the Most Pure Virgin in his arms and bore her into the Temple, past the court of the virgins, behind the first veil, and into the Holy of Holies, where even the High Priest did not dare to go but for one occasion a year. There, in the Temple, Our Lady would spend the next nine years or more of her life, in devotion and humble seclusion, passing much of her time in handiwork, and in sacred reading and prayer in the Holy of Holies. There she conversed regularly with the Archangel Gabriel and was fed directly by the angels. When she came of marriageable age she made clear to the priests that she had pledged her virginity to God, and had no intention to marry. Though this was against all Israelite custom and had never before been practiced (believing-marriage at that time holding the preeminence in honor), the priests arranged for the All-Holy Theotokos to be given in betrothal to the aged Joseph, and in this way to fulfill the appearance of custom while guarding and protecting the consecrated virginity of Holy Mary. It was in this virginal purity that she lived and prepared herself to become the True Temple of the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ, and it is in this virginal purity that she conceived and bore our Savior, lived out her entire earthly life, and reigns as the Queen of Heaven at the right hand of her Son even as we speak.

The Theotokos is the True Tabernacle and Temple of God. The Entrance of our Lady into the Temple is a major signpost in the outworking of the salvation of the Lord. It is itself a marker of the coming of the New Covenant, of the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth and the time when God will radically move to take up His dwelling within men! Her Entrance proclaims that things are the changing; the old Temple is passing away; a whole new order of life is arriving. One in which human beings themselves will become the receptacles of the Divine Presence. For a Jew to say, “God is with us” and for a Christian to say “God is with us “ are radically different things, and the Virgin is where the change is marked. The Kontakion of the Feast emphasizes this reality,

“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 Divien Spirit; her do God’s Angels hymn with songs of praise, for she is truly the heavenly tabernable”

The unthinkable is happening. The Supreme God Who dwells in unapproachable light is preparing to come down to earth. And before He actually comes to dwell in the Virgin’s womb He draws Her into the womb of His Presence in the Earthly Holy of Holies. There the God and the Virgin are united, and the spiritual preparation is made for the most earth-shattering event of the conception of the heavenly God in the womb of a humble maiden. God is preparing to descend to earth, and so He calls His chariot into the most heavenly place on the earth: the Holy of Holies in the Temple.

You are God’s Temple. The Holy Virgin is the preeminent human temple of God, and she serves for us as the model of what we ourselves are to called to be. For the miracle of becoming God’s dwelling place and tabernacle which happened to her has also happened to us. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). And again the Holy Apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God wil destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are” (1 Cor. 3: 16-17). Every believer is consecrated as a Temple of the living God at his baptism when the Spirit of God takes up permanent residence within. Each eucharist is the reception of our Sweet Lord Jesus Christ Himself directly into our bodies, it is a renewal of the Divine Presence in the temple of our body. All of our labors to love Christ and keep His holy word results in an intensifying of the Divine Presence within us. “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and my Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him” (St. Jn. 14:23).

Today our Virginal Mother calls us to imitate her and to be fit Temples of God. Why was our Lady chosen to fulfill this greatest of all human tasks? Because of her spotless virginity and purity. What does God love more than this? What draws His Presence more than this? When we laud and acclaim our Lady’s Virginity we don’t simply mean her sexual chastity. We mean rather her complete and total consecration of her entire being to God. Physical virginity, and the denial of the pleasures of marriage, is simply an outworking of this consecration to God. “One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided” (1Cor. 7:32-33). And our Lord said, “There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come eternal life” (St. Lk. 18:29-30).

This complete consecration to God is beautifully described by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his treastise On Virginity. There he describes virginity as a most grace-filled way of life that is able to lift one right up into the heavens itself. For the virgin is like an underground pipe with not outlets. If the water runs through the pipe without outlet the pipe is even able to be directed vertically and the water will move upward due to the pressure. If, however, there are many outlets the water pressure will fall and with it the ability of the water to go vertical. This is what our Lady was like. She shut off all of the valves of this life. She was uninterested in even blessed earthly pleasures for she wanted only God, and her consecration vaulted her to the heavens.

Today the Virgin calls us her children to follow her lead. She calls us to consecrate ourselves more and more to her Son. She shows us how to be pure Temples of God. God’s presence within us is the governing feature of our life. It is the fountainhead of our ethics. Why do we live the way we do? This last week in my daily devotional I applied the truth about being God’s Temple to speech. What kind of sound is appropriate in a Temple? Is it not primarily silence? And when there is noise is it not primarily the noise of praise and edification? Is not slander, gossip, and worldly chatter to be unheard of in the Temple precincts? You are a Temple of God. Why do we avoid excess, disdain fornication, immorality, impurity, and living with wrath and clamor, but always pursue peace? Because we are God’s Temple. How can we abuse our bodies by excess when they are holy and consecrated Temples of God? How can we join ourselves to another in illicit relations when we would be joining Christ to a prostitute? How can you despair when Christ, the Hope of Glory, is in you? This is the Mystery which had been hidden from past ages and generations but has now been manifested. “Christ in you, the Hope of Glory” (Col. 1: 27). To our Man-Loving God, to the One Who desires to dwell in men! be all glory and honor forever! And to the All-Pure Virgin, our Lady and Mother, who became the Living Temple of God and has shown us the life of purity be our veneration and love from now until we fall into her embrace and unto all ages. Amen.