The feast today is the story of our salvation through the temple of God.
The first temple was the temple in Jerusalem. It was a foreshadowing of the temple to come. It was localized in one place – the city of Jerusalem. In it were no images of God, for “No one has ever seen God. (1 John 4:12)” The Liturgy tells us that he is “ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing, yet ever the same.” The temple was his footstool on earth. Here animal sacrifice was offered to God, which was only a foreshadowing of the perfect sacrifice to be offered by our Lord, “when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)”
The second temple is Mary, the birth-giver of God.” In today’s feast, she enters the temple of Jerusalem in order to replace it, for she shall bear God within her womb. As the new and living temple of God, she is our temple, for like Mary, who carried God in her womb, we receive God into our bodies in Holy Communion. As Mary was fed in the temple by angelic bread, so we receive the bread of life, the Body of Jesus, and his holy blood of the perfect sacrifice, which becomes our sacrifice of praise. St. Paul teaches us, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1),” in Sunday’s Epistle, he wrote, “you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)” This is the temple of God for us today.
We know nothing certain about the life of the Prophet Obadiah. The Synaxarion [the lives of saints] identifies him with the servant of King Ahaz, who left to become a follower of Elijah, but that is not possible, since Obadiah’s prophecy was against Edom, pointing to a time after the exile. He is one of several prophets commemorated in the Phillip’s Fast, and verse 21 can be related to the coming of Jesus into the world: “And deliverers will ascend Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingship shall be the Lord’s. (Obadiah 21)”
Eastern Catholic Bishops of United States, 
The Philip’s Fast (Pylypivka), the pre-Christmas fast, begins today. The Church begins the Fast the day after the feast of the Holy and All-Praiseworthy Apostle Philip. The Fast is a period of 40 days of spiritual preparation for the celebration of the Nativity/Theophany cycle of the liturgical (Church) year.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls Phillip, who immediately follows him. He then brings his friend Nathaniel to Jesus, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth. (John 1:45)” This is the feast to begin our Christmas preparation. Phillip leads us to the one true Messiah, the child born of Mary in Bethlehem. The child “who, though he was in the form of God, did not rega