LEAVETAKING OF THE ENTRY

For all Marian feasts, there are only two possible readings from the Gospel. This is because when the statute on liturgical readings was created, there were apparently not many feasts yet. Therefore, one single reading was extended to all subsequent days by default, as it were.

Evangelical preachers often reproach the Orthodox, saying that there is nothing about Mary in the New Testament. They are right. There is no need to try to find what is not there. This is true. But there is another truth. For everything in Scripture is about Her. It’s just that Mary had nothing of Her own. Her whole life was in Christ the Messiah. Therefore, Her birth is the birth of Jesus. Her death is the death of Jesus on the Cross. Even the fact that the Dormition reproduces elements of Christ’s and the Apostles’ farewell and contains mournful features, as if there were an element of suffering for the world in Her passing, is explained by the fact that She simply had nothing of Her own. As Paul writes: “Our whole life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

It is very important for us to learn this ability to have nothing. Try to imagine what great freedom this is, especially in our times. What always strikes the hearts of believers is that in the wills of some bishops, even primates of apostolic churches, which are written in advance, there is often the following statement: “I cannot bequeath anything, because I have nothing.” This contains the colossal, all-encompassing divine future of man’s likeness to God. It was characteristic of Mary first of all.

The celebration in honor of her Entry into the Temple is also a celebration of a human being who has nothing. The theological, ideological idea that Mary lived in the Holy of Holies, completely devoted to God, is representing the same theological idea, namely: a sign and an affirmation that she had nothing of her own. She did not have her own body, for everything was given to God in order to become His throne. She did not have her own biography either. We know nothing about her. Tradition has attempted to reconstruct her earthly life. It is the same as the life of Saint Joseph. We do not know who he is or what he is. The Western Church says that he was a virgin and the prototype of all monks, the father of all ascetic believers. That is why there is an image of him in every Catholic church. The Eastern Church tried to “make” the marriage of Joseph and Mary “fictitious” in order to completely overshadow it. This is possible because Joseph really has nothing of his own. Nobel Prize winner José Saramago (1922–2010), our contemporary, came up with his own “gospel,” where he wrote that Joseph was crucified for resisting the Romans, and his son Jesus supposedly repeated this path, giving it a completely different meaning.

On the day of farewell to the feast of the Entry of Mary, the Church, as a community of believers, like her, but in a completely different way, also enters the Temple to learn to have nothing of her own and thus become like her, becoming the living Throne of God.