The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

On November 21 the Church remembers an ancient tradition: that Mary, as a young child, was brought by her parents, Sts. Joachim and Anne, to the Temple in Jerusalem and offered to God. The account does not come from the Bible. It is told in the Protoevangelium of James, a 2nd-century writing that the Church does not count as Scripture but that shaped Christian devotion to Mary's early life.

The feast took root in the East, where it is still one of the great feasts of the year, known as the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple. It is linked to the dedication of a church of St. Mary near the Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century. The West adopted it slowly, and it entered the Roman calendar in the late Middle Ages.

The Church keeps this memorial not to vouch for every detail of the story but for what it shows: Mary belonged to God from the very beginning, and her whole life was an offering. Since 1953 the day has also been kept as a day of prayer for cloistered monks and nuns, who give their lives to God in prayer as she did.