“I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1). This psalm of ascent marks not only the arrival of Jews to Jerusalem as they would head up Mount Zion toward the Temple, but it also marks a feast of our Lady as the first psalm from second vespers in the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The connection between the Temple and our Lady is intentional. Mary is associated with Zion, the city of God, and Zion with the Temple. When the Angel Gabriel declares, “The Lord is with you,” Joseph Ratzinger observes how the words contain a double promise to Mary as the daughter Zion, the personification of Israel: “God will come to save, and he will come to dwell in her. The angel’s dialogue with Mary reprises this promise and in so doing makes it concrete in two ways. What in the prophecy is said to daughter Zion is now directed to Mary: She is identified with daughter Zion, she is daughter Zion in person.”¹ God’s dwelling was in the womb of Israel, in the Ark of the Covenant, in the Temple. “This dwelling ‘in the womb’ of Israel now becomes quite literally real in the Virgin of Nazareth.”²

What more can be said about Our Lady and the Temple? To begin, it will be good to affirm what Uwe Michael Lang observes about the Lord’s relationship with the Temple: “Jesus had a complex relationship with the Jerusalem Temple: like any faithful Jew, he participated in Temple worship, but he also criticized its priestly establishment for systemic corruption and contamination of the sacred space.”³ This critical attitude spills over into the relationship between the Christian liturgy and Temple worship. Avoiding a photocopy-like continuity between the Temple of Jerusalem and sacrifice in early Christianity, Lang reiterates that “Jesus’ own relationship to the Jerusalem Temple was complex, and it combined reverences for its rituals with a critique of its present condition.”⁴ He goes on to point out how in examples like Qumran “a highly critical attitude towards the current state of the Jerusalem Temple and its priesthood went hand in hand with an imitatio templi, [. . .] ‘the effort of channeling the sanctity that pertains to the Temple (and its sacrificial cult) to other forms of worship.’”⁵ Should we be surprised when this complex relationship is played out in God’s revelation and in the life of Mary?

Beginnings

Even in the opening chapters of the Lucan Gospel, there are both affirmations and implicit criticisms of the Jerusalem Temple. When Zechariah takes up his priestly duty and goes into the Temple to burn incense, one might expect that moment to be the definitive revelation of God’s fulfillment of his promises. But it is not. It is a promise of, and reference to, something greater and more unexpected. Zechariah’s son will “make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:17). When it comes to what this child will be (cf. Luke 1:66), or any specification of the one who is to come, the priest can only remain silent. Rather, it is the young virgin of Nazareth who will bear the weight of the definitive revelation and whose cooperation will be sought to bring about God’s fulfilling habitation with his people.⁶ She with whom the Lord dwells is overshadowed by the Shekhinah and bears Christ to the world.

In the Temple’s Shadow

The apocryphal Protoevangelium of James offers us some thoughts on Mary’s childhood. This source provides us with one of the first accounts of the names of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne. The account has Anne lamenting her lack of children, crying out, “Because I have become a curse in the presence of the sons of Israel, and I have been reproached, and they have driven me in derision out of the temple of the Lord.”⁷ The Lord’s answer comes as a response to Anne’s cry of being estranged from the Temple precincts. The answer instructs Joachim to sacrifice ten she-lambs without spot or blemish for the Lord. Joachim took his offerings to the priest in the Temple. Joachim concludes, “Now I know that the Lord has been gracious unto me, and has remitted all my sins. And he went down from the temple of the Lord justified, and departed from his own house. And her months were fulfilled, and in the ninth month Anne brought forth. And she said to the midwife: What have I brought forth? And she said: A girl. And said Anne: My soul has been magnified this day. And she laid her down. And the days having been fulfilled, Anne was purified, and gave the breast to the child, and called her Mary.”⁸

The Protoevangelium describes how the child Mary set up a sanctuary in her bedroom, and later how her parents fulfill a vow they had made to commit her to Temple service. They take Mary to the Temple when she was three years old, and she remains there until she is betrothed to Joseph.⁹

St. Alphonsus Liguori describes Mary’s activity growing up in the Temple with the added note that it was due to her own prompting. He notes how at the age of three, Mary “entreated her parents that she might be placed in the temple according to the promise which they had made.”¹⁰ St. Alphonsus characterizes Mary’s life upon entering life in the Temple, “Henceforth the life of Mary in the temple was but one continual exercise of love, and the offering of her whole self to her Lord…. Thus, Mary, a young virgin in the temple, did nothing but pray. And seeing the human race lost and hateful to God she especially prayed for the coming of the Messias, desiring then to be the servant of that happy Virgin who was to be the mother of God”¹¹ always in correspondence with divine grace.

The visions of Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich suggest that in her service to the Temple, Mary would be trained to attend to the priests’ robes, namely, in washing out the blood from them.¹² The vision has a young Mary being warned by the priests that her hands would also get bloody. Mary responds, “at once without hesitation that she would gladly undertake this work if she were considered worthy.”¹³ One cannot help but notice the extreme fittingness that she who would provide for the Body of the Lord, who would in fact supply the body from her own flesh, would have been trained to attend to the blood of the garments of the high priest. Her Son, the true High Priest, who would say, “Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body thou prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5). Her willingness to cooperate in the blood that washes began evidently from very early on.

“A Virgin Will Conceive”

Avenues of interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 open up if we consider older scholarship suggesting official cultic service to the Temple rendered by virgins under the title “‘almah.” ¹⁴ This interpretation occasions further insight into the complex relationship between Our Lady and the Temple.

Cyrus Gordon finds connections between ‘almah and Virgin in a text in Ugarit from 1400 BC, thus predating Moses and Isaiah. ¹⁵ Gordon mentions the term and its connotation to a kind of divine maternity. Beatrice Brooks notes ‘almah among other functionaries in fertility cults and sees a comparison between the Babylonian entu, a “virgin high priestess who presided in the special chamber of the god…, of high social rank…who functioned as wife of the god in connection with the celebration of the divine marriage” with the cultic notions of ‘almah.¹⁶ Whatever connection there may be might simply draw attention to the ways that God surprises, or even combats, the expectations for a divine mother, by preparing for a mother of a Divine Son.¹⁷ Brooks names the formal function of ‘almah and draws attention to Isaiah 7:14 and to apocryphal works like the Protoevangelium of James to note how the cultic role of the virgins comprised of singing and dancing at religious festivals and the duty to dance in the vineyards on the Day of Atonement.¹⁸

If ‘almah has these cultic overtones as a virgin functionary in the Temple, then stories told about Simeon become even more fascinating.¹⁹ There are stories beginning in the 10th century AD which tell that Simeon was one of the translators of the 3^rd-century-BC Septuagint.²⁰ One strand of the Eastern accounts is that Simeon held doubts in his heart about the prophetic nature of the words of the translation produced by him and the other members of The Seventy who translated. Every time a word came to him with prophetic intent, he doubted. The Lord’s response was to allow Simeon to see it fulfilled. In this case, Simeon would see fulfilled in a virgin that he had originally known in virtue of her Temple service. Whether or not the stories are true, they express an intuition that the Nunc dimittis draws a deeper sigh of relief from more years than is typically imagined and references works of the Lord that have been a long time in coming to fruition.

Visits to the Temple

The complexities in our Lady’s relationship with the Temple continue in the episodes of her adult life, episodes which simultaneously get described as joys and sorrows. The episodes of the presentation and the finding in the Temple comprise the occasion for both joyful mysteries and events counted among her sorrows. The joys are the inverse side of the sorrows. The joy is the presentation; the sorrow is the prophecy of Simeon. The joy is the finding in the Temple, the necessity for which is occasioned by the sorrow of his being lost.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux begins his first sermon on the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the line, “Today the Virgin Mother leads the Lord of the temple into the Temple of the Lord.”²¹ Psalm 48:9 prompts his reflections: “We have thought on your mercy, O God, in the midst of your temple.” He contrasts this procession into the Temple area with the Lord’s last. In the first, he is carried by Our Lady; in the second, he is carried by an ass. Bernard encourages his hearers to take up Christ and let him inhabit one’s heart, for this is his temple. He also observes that, as the body grows, so grows Christ’s mercies. The Temple thus prompts reflections on mercy.

Our Lady’s visits to the Temple each imply a kind of death. When she hears Simeon’s prophecy that a sword will pierce her heart, this indicates the kind of end she would see. Pope St. John Paul II calls this the “second annunciation.” He observes, “Simeon’s words seem like a second Annunciation to Mary, for they tell her of the actual historical situation in which the Son is to accomplish his mission, namely, in misunderstanding and sorrow.”²² Drawing out the complex sentiments our Lady likely experiences, John Paul continues: “While this announcement on the one hand confirms her faith it also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful.”²³

Pope Benedict XVI also reflects on this sacrificial act of our Lady: “The first person associated with Christ on the path of obedience, of proven faith and of sorrow shared is his mother Mary. The gospel text reveals this in the act of offering her Son: an unconditional sacrifice engaging her in her own person. Mary is Mother of him who is ‘the glory of his people Israel’ and ‘a light of revelation for the nations,’ but also of him who is ‘a sign of contradiction’ as well (cf. Luke 2:32, 34). And she, too, in her immaculate soul, must be pierced by the sword of sorrow, thus showing how her role in the history of salvation is not finished with the mystery of the Incarnation, but is consummated in the loving and sorrowful sharing in the death and Resurrection of her Son. Carrying her Son to Jerusalem, the Virgin Mother offers him to God as the true Lamb who takes away the sins of the world; she hands him to Simeon and Anna as an annunciation of redemption; she presents him to all as light for a secure journey on the path of truth and love.”²⁴

Pope Benedict, like Bernard, notices how our Lady’s first carrying the Lord will be consummated by a following up of the same path in his passion. It is fitting that the complex nature of Simeon’s prophecy draws Our Lady more deeply into communion with the Lord, even unto death, “The sword which pierces the soul of Mary indicates, then, the mortal suffering which strikes the depths of Mary’s soul, a terrible sorrow, like that provoked by a sword which wounds as it passes, which Mary herself must bear.”²⁵

St. Bernard offers the occasion for one final comment on our Lady and the mystery of the Presentation. In her purification, she is obedient to rites that she does not need. In this, even in his early life, she follows the example of her Son.²⁶

The loss and finding in the Temple are a foreshadowing of the Paschal Mystery. The occasion is upon the conclusion of Passover. Jesus is lost to Mary (and Joseph) for three days. He would be returned to them after three days, thus anticipating the Resurrection. However, Mary reveals the kind of suffering she would undergo at Calvary with her words upon finding Jesus: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously” (Luke 2:48). “This occasions the dialogue between Mary and Jesus: the Mother manifests her profound sorrow, the anguish of herself and of Joseph when they became aware of his absence. Jesus on his part replied with his true identity as Son, not of Joseph, but of God the Father, in whose house, the Temple, he found himself.”²⁷ I would not want to read into this episode something akin to the Lord’s own self-discovery, but, rather, to draw attention to both a beauty and a pain regarding Our Lady and the Temple. This episode reminds her that her Son is also the Son of the One whose Temple it is. It also draws attention to the purpose of his coming. The One who is God has come to die. The separation from her implicated in his mission and his death affirms his divinity and humanity and painfully suggests to her the need to let him go. Pope John Paul reflects on the faith this episode demanded.²⁸ He notes, “through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self-emptying.”²⁹

The Paschal Mystery

The pinnacle of joy and sorrow is naturally Our Lord’s Passion and death, which are also the definitive destruction of and occasion for rebuilding the Lord’s Temple: “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). It is interesting that the one who “ponders all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19) would have episodes of such conflicting sentiments concerning the Temple and the events that took place there upon which to ruminate. Could it be that these events and this complex relationship provide the contextual intelligibility needed to accompany her Son in his Passion and crucifixion? How can her “yes” lead her to this? How can she, in some way, join his will in submitting to such evil? How, with that “yes,” can she grieve the loss of her Son? The complexities with which she has grown up have prepared her to walk this counter-intuitive path. She has been prepared to live and cooperate in this strange “both-and” of his death for the life of the world. In so many ways, she has been prepared to bring her “yes” to its fulfillment.

Mary would have known about the corruption of the Temple worship, but she offered her life in service of that worship all the same. Indeed, we saw St. Alphonsus above note that she was deeply attuned to the need for a savior that she prayed to serve the one who would give birth to him without presuming that she was that one. She was the temple Virgin who would conceive. She was to be the Mother of God.

She is the city who models the Church, whose Temple is the Lamb; she had provided the Temple; she is the Ark. He is the real presence whose body came from her and whose blood he was. In her pieta, she now receives his corpus and tends to the blood using all the skills with which providence had supplied her. Her complex relationship with the Temple prepared her to serve him well and cooperate with his saving plan.

1. Joseph Ratzinger, Mary: The Church at the Source, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997, 65.
2. Ratzinger, Mary: The Church at the Source, 65.
3. Uwe Michael Lang, The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 39.
4. U.M. Lang, The Roman Mass, 44.
5. Lang, The Roman Mass, 44.
6. This critique gets lived out in the life of John the Baptist who takes up his ministry in the desert rather than the temple.
7. Protoevangelium of James, 3. See https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm (accessed November 6, 2024).
8. Protoevangelium of James, 5.
9. The Protoevangelium presents a picture of an aged Joseph with children from a previous marriage. This is an opportunity to point out that the Protoevanglium, while it can serve as a help and certainly a source of interest, is not inspired. There is also a strong testimony from many witnesses to a younger more vibrant Joseph.
10. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary (London: Catholic Way Publishing, 2013), 636.
11. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary, 637.
12. Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Charlotte, SC: TAN Books, 2013), 91-92.
13. Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 92.
14. I am indebted to Casey Cooney, seminarian for the Diocese of Madison, for these references and insights.
15. Cyrus H. Gordon, “‘Almah in Isaiah 7:14,” Journal of Bible and Religion, April 1953: 106.
16. Beatrice A. Brooks, “Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 60:3 (September 1941): 232.
17. Joseph Ratzinger suggests that through the economy of salvation, God fights against the perversions of truth and temptations to idolatry in fertility cults. See Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1983), 13-15.
18. This same connotation of ‘almah is given in an article by John Steinmueller which cites A Textbook of North Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford 1903), “virgins who sang and danced in temple rites; cf. Ps. 68:26; Ps.46; 1 Chron. 15:20.” Steinmueller defends Jerome’s assertion that the Punic language has a word similar to the Hebrew also signifying “virgin.”
19. I am indebted to Deacon Aaron Siehr, Archdiocese of Milwaukee, for this reference and insight.
20. E. van Staaldullne-Sulman, “Simeon the Just, the Septuagint and Targum Jonathan,” in D. Shepherd, J. Joosten, & M.N. van der Meer (eds.), Septuagint, Targum and Beyond: Comparing Aramaic and Greek Versions from Jewish Antiquity, 318-19.
21. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Purificatione B. Mariae, Sermo I (PL 183:365).
22. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, par. 16.
23. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, par.16.
24. Benedict XVI, Homily for the Day of Consecrated Life, February 2, 2006. Quoted in Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons, ed. Mark Miravalle (Goleta, CA: Seat of Wisdom Books, Queenship Publishing, 2007), 99.
25. Fr. Settimio M. Manelli, “The Virgin Mary in the New Testament” in Mariology, 102.
26. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo III (PL 183: 370).
27. Fr. Settimio Manelli, “The Virgin Mary in the New Testament” in Mariology, 104.
28. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, par. 17.
29. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, par.17.