The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Celebrated on November 21, the feast comes from the Eastern tradition that Mary was offered to the Lord in the Temple by her parents at age three, prefiguring her offering of her Son. Although founded on apocryphal sources, the feast has been kept in the East since the eighth century and entered the Roman calendar in 1585.

The account derives from the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century text beloved in the East, which describes the child Mary ascending the Temple steps and being received by the priest. The theological heart of the feast is not the historical event but what it signifies: that Mary was set apart for God from the beginning, a living temple consecrated before the Temple of stone.