The Temple of God
The most pure Temple of the Savior, the precious Bridal Chamber and Virgin, the sacred Treasure of the glory of God, is brought today into the house of the Lord. She brings with her the grace of the divine Spirit. God’s angels sing her praise: She is the heavenly tabernacle. (Kontakion of the Feast of the Entry of the Mother of God)
THERE IS A STRANGE SILENCE about the Nativity in the first few days of Advent. While we begin to prepare for Christmas through fasting on November 15, the coming Nativity is first announced in the Church’s worship on November 21 (the Entry of the Mother of God) with the Katavasias of Christmas, chanted during the Matins service:
Christ is born, give glory. Christ comes from heaven, go to meet Him. Christ is on earth, be exalted. Sing to the Lord, all the earth, and sing hymns in gladness, O people, for He has been glorified.
The Entry of the Mother of God is a story that is nowhere recorded in the Old or New Testaments, yet it was well known to the early Christians. The earliest record of the story is to be found in the Gospel of James, known also as the Protoevangelium (First Gospel) of James, or the Infancy Gospel of James, written around AD 145 (St. James was certainly not the true author). This text narrates the events of the Virgin Mary’s conception, birth, and infancy, her entry into the temple in Jerusalem, and her betrothal to Joseph, as well as the more familiar story of the Annunciation. It is also the oldest Christian text to state that Mary remained a virgin after the Birth of Christ. It is one of those gospels which did not qualify for entry into the New Testament. For a book to become part of the New Testament, it had to meet four basic criteria. It had to be:
1) ancient (written in the first century),
2) apostolic (written by an apostle or a companion of the Apostles),
3) catholic/universal (widely known and accepted by the Christian churches), and
4) Orthodox in its theology.
Not all books that failed to qualify were utterly rejected by the Church. Furthermore, while certain texts were not accepted as part of the New Testament, some of the narratives contained in them were already well known to the Christians (the early Christians were acquainted with stories about Christ, His Mother, and the Apostles by word of mouth). And so, though the Gospel of James did not meet the Church’s criteria for entry into the New Testament, much of its content has been preserved in the Church’s hymns and icons.
The story tells us the infant Mary was taken by her parents to the temple in Jerusalem. There is nothing particularly notable about that. But the Greek word for “Entry” (Eisodia) is plural. For she was taken not only into the main part of the temple, but also into two even more significant places within it: the Holy Place (sometimes called the “Greater Room”) and—most remarkably of all—the Holy of Holies (sometimes referred to as the “Inner Room”).
The temple was built by King Solomon in the tenth century BC. The Ark of the Covenant
(Ex. 25:10-16) containing the tablets of the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses on Sinai (Ex. 20) was placed within the Holy of Holies (3 Kg. [1 Kings] 8:6), which was the most important part of the temple, being the dwelling place of the name of God (3 Kg. [1 Kings] 8:17). The Holy of Holies was hidden by a veil and no one was permitted to enter it, apart from the high priest, and even he could enter only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people (Lev. 16).
~ Adapted from Vassilios Papavassiliou, Meditations for Advent: Preparing for Christ’s Birth
