Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, the father and the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, presented her to God in the Temple, to live there and to belong to God forever, when she was three years, two months and thirteen days old. Saint Joachim and Saint Anne sensed in the Blessed Virgin Mary from the moment of her birth that she was divinely great, and belonged to God and not to them. When her father and her mother brought Mary to the Temple of Jerusalem and presented her there, Saint Zachary, a priest of the Temple and the father of Saint John the Baptist and the husband of Saint Elizabeth, received her. He took her by the hand and led her into the cloister of virgins who dwelt in the Temple. There she stayed, adored God and prayed until she was fourteen years old. Then her first espousals to Saint Joseph were miraculously arranged by God, so as to give her a virginal husband to protect her in her virginal motherhood when she conceived her Divine Child and brought God into this world.
Presentation of Mary, by the Master of Wilten, between 1460 and 1465 (source)
