Presentation of the BVM

THE VIRGIN AND THE TEMPLE
From the writing of Fr Yves Congar 3
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The only occasion on which the Gospels expressly mention the Virgin Mary
in connection with the Temple are in the account of her Purification and of the
Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple
after four days’ absence on his part and three anxious searching by his parents. To
these very brief indications, the piety of Christians very soon added the idea of the
presentation of Mary in the Temple at the age of three to be consecrated to the
service of God. We are dealing here with a symbolical representation of a
profound spiritual reality about which the tradition and the doctrine of the Church
provide us with valid information. Mary, predestined to be the Mother of Jesus,
true God and true man, and to be worthy of her vocation, was prepared by the gift
of exceptional graces and lived with unfailing fidelity a most pure life of inner
consecration to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As the type of all faithful
souls and of the Church herself, Mary expressed spiritually and supremely in her
life the “presentation” which, for each one of us, is to begin by the service of faith
and to be consummated in heaven.

It is obvious that the tradition and doctrine of the Church may, without
falling prey to the imaginary productions of the apocrypha, propound statements
concerning the status of the Mother of God in relation either to the Jewish
messianic temple going far beyond what we are explicitly told in the three short
passages from the Gospel which narrate the incidents mentioned above. If Mary
is the Mother of God, she has a special relation to the body of Christ which is the
true temple — to his physical body and doubtless also, in a certain sense, to his
body the Church. She is herself a temple of God in a quite specific and sublime
way, both because Christ was within her from the moment of his conception until
that of his birth, and because of the exceptional spiritual gifts she received in
preparation for her divine motherhood and as a reward for her free acceptance of
this vocation, not only after the Annunciation but during the whole of her life.
Hence the liturgy — the Oriental liturgy in particular — shows a profound
understanding of the mystery of Mary when it constantly uses the texts concerning
the Temple and the tabernacle in order to express it.

3 The Mystery of the Temple,Westminster(Maryland) 1962, p.254-255.