Liturgy and Life
The Manna, the Tablets, and the Rod: On the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God by Hieromonk Herman (Majkrzak)
E
very ye ar at the end of November , we celebrate the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, the day when her parents brought her to live in the Temple at Jerusalem until she would become betrothed to Saint Joseph. This feast honors in particular the girlhood of the Mother of God. The surpassingly holy childhood of Our Lady was unique, just as unique as her surpassingly holy adulthood. She is, as the poet William Wordsworth wrote, “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” However, we all share the same human nature as the Mother of God. We are, all of us, sons or daughters of our common first-parents, Adam and Eve. And this means the life of the Holy Virgin is not only an exalted inspiration for us, but also a model. And she is a model for us not only in her motherhood, but also in her childhood. The feast day’s reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews is instructive here: Behind the second curtain stood the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. (Hebrews 9:3–4)
This passage gives us a list of the sacred objects that were treasured up within that golden chest, called the Ark of the Covenant. All these objects bore some connection to the Exodus from Egypt, when Israel was delivered from slavery and crossed the Red Sea. But for the Church of the New Israel— that’s us—all of these objects are also understood in one way or another as prefiguring the Mother of God. They are foreshadowings—or, to use the technical term, types—of the Holy Virgin, each of them revealing something special about her. Thus the Church sings during the vesting of the bishop at a hierarchical Liturgy: “The prophets proclaimed thee from on high, O Virgin: the jar, the staff, the tables of the law…”
The jar containing the manna shows that the Virgin contained in her womb the Bread of Life, our Lord Jesus Christ. The tablets of the Law are a figure of Our Lady who bore the eternal Word of God, not engraved on stone, but formed from her very flesh and blood. And the rod—Aaron’s rod that miraculously blossomed and produced almonds—is, as the Canon for the feast explains, a prefiguring of the divine childbirth of the Holy Virgin (cf. Num. 17:8; Canon 2, ode 4, trop. 6, see Festal Menaion, p. 180). But the Entrance of the Theotokos gives occasion to consider these three types or figures of the Virgin from a somewhat different vantage point. The manna, the tablets, the rod: each of them shows us an indispensable characteristic of true and godly childhood, and, therefore, of true and godly parenthood. First, manna, of course, was the miraculous bread that God sent down every day on His quite ungrateful people as He led them through the desert. He nourished them despite their frequent complaining and grumbling. He lavished His love on them. He fed them with the finest wheat (Ps. 80:16). Our holy Lady, sojourning during the years of her girlhood in the Holy of Holies, was fed every day by an angel, who brought her heavenly bread. O Virgin, fed in faith by heavenly bread in the temple of the Lord, thou hast brought forth unto the world the Bread of life. (Praises of the feast, third sticheron. Festal Menaion, page 194)
The icon of the feast depicts this angel and this bread in the top-right corner. God nourished this holy girl, He lavished His love on her, and she received with gratitude and joy that which the old Israel received with grumbling. There are lessons here for parents and children both. It’s critical to show children affection, support, and warmth—and, of course, to feed them (every day!) whether they’re grateful or not. And kids ought to take it as a reminder to thank their parents for everything. Every day, and for every meal, parents deserve gratitude. 45
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