November 21/ December 4: Entrance of the Mother of God

This is the first feast of the season leading to the Nativity and Theophany. It is based on the account of the life of the Mother of God as a child in the Jerusalem Temple (found in the Protevangelion of James). It shows her to be the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, as the 'living temple': Today the Theotokos, the temple that is to hold God, is led into the Temple and Zacharias receives her..  

Fr John Behr wrtites: "...she becomes the one through whom the glory of God enters the world, by being the gateway through which the Lord enters the more perfect tabernacle, offering his eternal sacrifice and being the High Priest of the good things to come. She is the bridge, the passageway or the exodus from creation to recreation and redemption."

Over at Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment blog, he writes the following concerning relics, which I think a nice bit that could be put to good use. Speaking of the Feast of the Holy Relics, he affirms:

This feast is, in my view, rich in themes for evangelical preaching and teaching, and ripe for wider revival. It teaches the goodness of material things against a false 'spiritualism'; it preaches the ultimately indissoluble link between Body and Soul against the sub-Christian notion that only the soul really matters; it proclaims the transforming eschatological glory which will clothe this perishable with what is imperishable, and this mortal with what is immortal, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.