This window depicts the Virgin Mary’s parents, Saints Joachim and Anne, presenting their only daughter to the high priest in the Temple.  This story (and for that matter, the names of Mary’s parents) come to us not through the canonical Scriptures, but through tradition, legend, and extra-canonical literature.  The story is very old, appearing in the apocryphal books known as the Protoevangelium of St. James, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary.  Oddly enough, it is also alluded to in the Koran, the book held sacred by Muslims, which was written in the 7th century.  The event was depicted in mosaics as early as the 12th century.

    Early Christians found the Gospels to be tantalizingly short of details about the infancy of Jesus and the life of Mary, and were anxious to seize on any bit of information that would throw light on these “hidden” aspects of Christ and His Mother.  Thus, many legends and stories concerning these subjects were circulated over the centuries.  Some of these tales, as well as facts and fables about various saints, were compiled in the Legenda Aurea, or “Golden Legend”, written in 1270 by Blessed Jacobus de Voragine {feast: July 13}, a Dominican and Archbishop of Genoa.  Widely circulated, these stories inspired many generations of artists, who included in their work scenes and details that are often puzzling and unknown to most people of today.

    According to The Golden Legend, Joachim and Anne were childless for the first 20 years of their marriage.  Joachim, the story says, once went to the Temple in Jerusalem to make offerings, but was turned away by a scribe who said that because he had no children he was not blessed by God.  In despair, Joachim left the city and lived with the shepherds in the countryside.  Anne waited for five months, not knowing if her husband was dead or alive.  Then an angel appeared to her and said, “Fear not.  That which shall be born of thee shall be held in wonder until the end of time.”  The same angel appeared to Joachim and commanded him to return to Jerusalem.  Anne was waiting for him there at the Golden Gate, and when they met they embraced and kissed.  By this chaste “Golden Kiss”, the legend says, Mary was conceived.  Due to the story’s popularity in past times, many old art works portray Joachim kissing Anne.

    It should be noted, however, that this is not what the Church means when she teaches that Mary was conceived without sin.  The “Golden Kiss” is a harmless pious legend, but the Immaculate Conception is an important dogma of the Catholic Church.  This infallible teaching holds that Mary, by the future merits of her Son, was preserved from inheriting the stain of the original sin, the sin by which Adam and Eve lost the perfect grace they had been created with.  Although this dogma was not solemnly defined and decreed until the 19th century, belief that the Mother of Christ received special sanctification has been held in the Church from the earliest times.  St. Gabriel at the Annunciation had hailed Mary as “full of grace”, and as early as the 2nd century she was revered as “the new Eve”.  The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is December 8, and the Feast of the Nativity of Mary is nine months later on September 8.

    Thankful to God for the gift of their daughter, The Golden Legend continues, Joachim and Anne dedicated Mary to the Temple in Jerusalem, where she was presented to the high priest.  To reach him at the altar, she had to climb 15 steps, symbolizing the 15 Psalms that Syriac tradition says the Jewish people sang when they first glimpsed Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile.  These steps appear in many artistic depictions of the Presentation of Mary, but they are missing from the window here at St. Martin’s, most likely due to size constraints.  However, other symbolic elements of the story can be seen.

    The young Mary wears upon her head a garland of white roses, symbolic of her purity, and also used in art as a symbol of the defeat of darkness and sin.  A similar garland can be found in depictions of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (see the statue of Mary at the front of church near this window, or the front of the marble altar between windows 2N and 3N).  The rose itself is often called the “queen of flowers”, and so became an emblem of Mary, the Queen of Heaven.  A wreath of roses is sometimes used to symbolize the Rosary, the great Marian devotional prayer.

    Mary is seen here in the Temple, the building which was originally constructed to holdthe golden Ark of the Covenant.  That vessel was lost in the destruction of 586 B.C., but now enters in Mary, who will become the Ark of the New Covenant.  The sovereign high priest of the Old Law is meeting the young girl chosen by God to be the Mother of His Son, the High Priest of the New Law.

    The Jewish high priest is wearing vestments described in detail in the Book of Exodus.  The specifications for these sacred garments were given by God Himself when He established the high priesthood of Aaron and his descendants.  On the high priest’s head is a mitre {see Exodus 28: 4, 37}, similar to that worn by Catholic bishops (although the latter headpiece may have actually evolved from caps worn by Greek athletes in the pre-Christian era).  The hem of his robe is lined with golden bells, so that “its tinkling may be heard as he enters and leaves the Lord’s presence in the sanctuary” {Ex 28:34-35}.  His pectoral, or breastplate, has 12 precious stones, representing the 12 tribes of Israel {see Ex 28:15-21}.  In Christian typology, the Aaronite priest with his 12 stones is seen as an anticipatory figure of Christ, the High Priest, with His 12 Apostles.

    The liturgical commemoration of the Presentation of Mary has a rather tortured history.  The event was first celebrated liturgically in the Orient, and a great canon (liturgical prayer) had been written for its feast by the 7th century.  By the 1100s it was a civic holiday in some areas of the East, during which the law courts did not sit.  Mary’s Presentation was first celebrated in certain Western locales in the 1300s.  Pope Pius II granted permission for the feast and its vigil to be observed in Saxony, and its celebration was soon taken up by many other dioceses.  Pope Sixtus IV received it into the Roman Breviary, but Pius V later struck it from the calendar.  The feast was again approved by Sixtus V in 1585, and is celebrated on November 21.

    A statue of the young Mary with St. Anne may be seen above the north side altar, next to a statue of the adult Mary holding the Christ Child.  St. Anne is the patron of housewives and cabinet makers.  St. Joachim is a patron of fathers.  This married couple, parents of Mary and grandparents of Jesus, are honored with a feast on July 26.