TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: In his book, Father Antonov, begins his description of the festal services with those of Pascha, and then goes through each of the Twelve Great Feasts in turn. We will in time include all his notes on these feasts, but it seemed more appropriate to our magazine format, if for the moment we omitted §121 - 123, and begin with §124 on the Entry of the Theotokos, a festival which we celebrate in November.

§ 124. The Services of the Feast of the Entry into the Temple of the All-holy Theotokos (21st November / 4th December). The festival of the Entry celebrates this sacred event and it was inaugurated after the fourth century.

The hymns appointed for the feast of the Entry describe the outer events connected with it (the procession with the candles, the meeting with the High Priest, &c), and its inner significance. In touching on this latter aspect, they tell us that the Mother of God was brought into the Temple that she might be brought up in the House of God and to prepare herself to become the Throne of God, being divinised yet retaining her own nature. Because of this, all the faithful, but particularly mothers and virgins, are called to glorify the Mother of God, inspired to do so with that joy which Joachim experienced and which the High Priest who met the holy Virgin Mary experienced, and which the invisible world of the Angels is even now experiencing.

In the Paramia (the Old Testament readings at Vespers) the following thoughts are contained: In the first reading (Exodus 40:1-5, 9-10, 16, 34-35) we learn how the Lord commanded Moses to erect a tabernacle, and prepare all the appurtenances therein, how He told him to consecrate it through anointing with oil, and how the cloud irradiated the tabernacle and filled it with the glory of the Lord. In the second (3 Kings 7:51, 8:1, 3, 7, 9-11), we are told how the ark of the covenant was solemnly taken into the Temple which Solomon had built, and how the glory of the Lord then filled the Temple, so that the priests could not even stand there to perform their ministry. The tabernacle and the Temple both serve as prefigurings of the Virgin Mary herself, she who is the temple not made by hands in which the Uncontainable God, Christ, would be contained. The third reading is one which is also heard on the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, and it speaks of the mystical gates which were seen by the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 43:27, 44:1-4).

The troparion of the feast (tone 4) runs thus:

“Today is the prelude of God’s good will
and the heralding of the salvation of mankind.
In the temple of God, the Virgin is presented openly,
and she proclaimeth Christ unto all.
To her, then, with a great voice let us cry aloud:
Rejoice, O thou fulfilment of the Creator’s dispensation.”

And the contakion (tone 4):

“The most pure temple of the Saviour,
the most precious bridal chamber and Virgin,
the sacred treasury of the glory of God,
is on this day brought into the house of the Lord,
bringing with her the grace that is in the Divine Spirit.
And the Angels of God chant praise unto her:
She is the heavenly tabernacle.”