Vigils Reading – Presentation of the BVM

THE VIRGIN AND THE TEMPLE

From the writing of Fr Yves Congar5

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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.