Presentation and Consecration of Mary at the Temple

Titian, Presentation of Mary at the Temple (details)

The Church celebrates on November 21, the feast of the Presentation of Mary at the Temple. This event is generally understood as the equivalent of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. It is a ceremony where the young child is presented to God on the one hand and where the young mother is purified on the other. This ceremony took place 20 days after birth for boys and 40 days after for girls.

In Maria Valtorta

In Maria Valtorta, this presentation of Mary at the Temple is doubled by the consecration of the young Mary at the Temple (EMV 6). This consecration becomes effective when the young child is three years old. She then enters the service of the Temple until her nubile majority. Anne of Phanuel, known to Maria Valtorta as well as in the Gospel, is the mistress of novices there. This privilege comes from the royal ancestry of the young Mary, descended from David, which the angel of the Annunciation will attest (cf. Luke 1:32) when he affirms that Jesus is of this race. It is known that Jesus receives his flesh from Mary alone.  

Meanwhile, Mary will receive careful education like all her companions and will be assigned to feminine tasks. This second event, which assumes the existence of young girls assigned to the service of the Temple, finds its foundation in the writings of other visionaries as well as in tradition, both good apocryphal and of the Fathers of the Church.

In the Bible

The Old Testament mentions, twice, the service of Women at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting:      

• "(Bezalel) made the basin of bronze and its stand of bronze, with the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting" Exodus 38:8.
• "Eli was very old. When he learned all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and that they lay with the women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting" 1 Samuel 2:22.     

In the New Testament, the description of Anna the prophetess who "did not depart from the Temple, worshiping God with fasting and prayer night and day" (Luke 2:37) may suggest that there were women in the Temple.  

In Psalm 45(44), one can hear echoes of this entry of the young Mary into the Temple:  

"Listen, O daughter, pay attention and incline your ear: forget your people and your father's house. Let the king be enthralled by your beauty! For he is your lord now. Bow down before him. The people of Tyre, the richest of peoples, will seek your favor by gifts. The princess is decked in her embroidered robe. In many colors she is led to the king. Following her are her companions, her maidens, who are escorted for you. They enter the king's palace amid shouts of joy." (Psalm 45 (44) 10-16).

In Traditions

In Jewish Tradition

In the Marian encyclopedia "Mary of Nazareth," Françoise Breynaert analyzes Jewish tradition: If the presence of women in the Temple is mentioned several times, their nature is uncertain.         

For his part, Clemens Brentano, (reported in the "Life of the Virgin Mary") believes he found in "Imreh Binah" by Rabbi Azarias de Rubeis (16th century), a Jewish authority attesting the presence of young girls serving in the Temple. This is true, but "The Annals of Christian Philosophy" points out that the citation from Philo of Alexandria which serves as the basis for Rabbi Azarias describes communities of men and women closer to Essene communities than to constituted bodies of the Temple.

In Apocryphal Tradition

The Protoevangelium of James, a Christian apocryphon of the 2nd century (§ 7), and Pseudo-Matthew (§ 4), a later and expanded Latin version of the Protoevangelium of James, mention that Mary was entrusted to the Temple at the age of three following the vow made by her parents in thanksgiving for her birth.

However, the fact that Anne of Phanuel, the prophetess, was "mistress of novices," which is credible, is an originality of Maria Valtorta and Marie d'Agréda.

In Patristic Tradition

This presence is recalled by many ancient authors:      

- Saint Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) situates in his letter "On the Birth of Christ" the presence of young girls "between the Temple and the veil".        

- Saint John Damascene (7th century) in the "First Homily for the Nativity of the Virgin Mary" cites young Mary, in her "third year", presented at the Temple by her parents "to live with the virgins who, night and day, ceaselessly praised God".     

- For his part, Baronius, in "Instructions... on the principal feasts of the Church by a seminary director" (Paris, Lecoffre, 1850, vol. 3, page 360), cites other authors in support of this thesis: Saint Epiphanius (4th century), Saint Germain of Constantinople (early 8th century), Saint Andrew the Apostle of Crete (early 8th century), Saint George of Nicomedia (9th century), and "several other Greek writers". 

- Among them, we can count Maximus the Confessor (580-662) who in his "Life of the Virgin," mentions Mary entrusted to the Temple at three years by her parents.

In the Catholic Church

The feast of the Presentation of Mary at the Temple is attested in Constantinople from the 8th century. It passed to the West in 1372 on the initiative of Pope Gregory XI. It is commemorated on November 21.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1676-1787), Doctor of the Church, refers in his foundational work of Marian theology "The Glories of Mary" (1748), to the visions of Saint Elizabeth of Schönau (1129-1164) and Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) according to which the Virgin Mary would have been properly raised in the Temple.         

It seems that from this moment, the Presentation of Mary at the Temple is spoken of in the same way as Jesus presented at the Temple, in reference to the purification ritual of her mother, as mentioned above.

Other Testimonies

Andrew the Apostle Lefèvre writes in "The Marvels of Architecture" – Hachette edition, Paris 1884, page 36: "The central part of the Temple, intended for the high priest and the priests, sixty cubits long by twenty wide, had three superimposed levels surrounded by galleries and cells, populated not only by Levites, but also by priestesses and sacred dancers." The term "priestesses," which he uses, can be translated as "nuns," more contemporary, but his mention of sacred dancers is surprising. Andrew the Apostle Lefèvre (1834–1904) does not mention his sources in the cited popularization work, but some credit can be given to the testimony of this anthropologist, specialist in architecture, who wrote on photographs by Henry Cammas "The Valley of the Nile" (Hachette, 1862), all the more so as the rest of this author's works suggest he was more admiring of the Enlightenment than of Christian tradition.

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