Vessel of Singular Devotion - THE PURIFICATION OF MARY

THE FAIREST FLOWER OF PARADISE - CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LITANY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN, ENRICHED WITH EXAMPLES DRAWN FROM THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS BY Very Rev. ALEXIS M. LEPICIER, O. S. M.

"And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His Mother: Behold this Child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; and thine own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed." (Luke, ii, 34, 35.)

ACCORDING to the law of Moses, the woman who had brought into the world a man-child, was to abstain from going into the Temple for forty days. After which time, she was to journey to Jerusalem, and there offer for her purification a lamb with a pigeon or turtle-dove; or by concession, if she were poor, a pair of turtle-doves or pigeons. (Lev. xii, 8.)

The conception of Christ in the womb of our blessed Lady was the work of the Holy Ghost, and hence Mary was not subject to this law in as much as it implied satisfaction for any fault whatever. But that same spirit of humility which had induced Jesus, though immune from all stain of origin, to obey the law of circumcision, impelled Mary also to submit to the law of purification.

The Holy of Holies having come upon earth to take away the sins of the world, (John, i, 29.) chose to appear among us as a sinner. It was therefore befitting that His Immaculate Mother, destined to cooperate with Him in the work of our redemption, should teach the world, by her submission to the law of purification, this great truth, that humility is the beginning of our salvation, as pride has been the root of our ruin. And just as Jesus willed to be born in poverty, so also Mary appeared in the Temple stripped of the goods of this world, for which reason she made to God the offering of the poor.

O holy humility, how pleasing art thou in the sight of the Most High, since it was to teach us lowliness, that the Word of God came down upon earth!

Mary went to the Temple of Jerusalem not only to be purified in accordance with the Law, but also to offer to God the Child Jesus, her new-born Son: Ut sisterent eum Domino" (Luke, ii, 22.)

The Law commanded that all newly born male children should be consecrated to the Lord. This precept was designed to recall to the Hebrews the memory of the passage of the destroying-Angel, who slew the first-born of Egypt, but spared the children of the Israelites. Later on however, God having, in place of the first-born of the Hebrews, set apart for the priesthood the entire tribe of Levi, the custom was introduced that the parents should immediately ransom their first-born at the price of five shekels. Mary and Joseph offered therefore this mystic ransom at the Temple, in a spirit of obedience.

But to what purpose was Jesus thus ransomed? Why, having been once offered to God, was He restored again to His parents? Ah, it is because He was the victim destined for the sacrifice of Golgotha, and it was necessary that the victim should be kept for the day of its immolation. Mary and Joseph are well aware of this. Being fully acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, they know that the Messias must accomplish the work of redemption by His death.

But, in order that the designs of God may be brought home to them with greater force, behold the Prophet Simeon, inspired by the Holy Spirit comes into the Temple, takes into his arms the Divine Infant and, blessing God, turns to Mary, foretelling her the bitter sorrow which, like a sharp sword, must one day pierce her sinless soul.

The holy old man Simeon knew well that the Messias was born only of Mary, and that to her alone would one day belong the offering up of Jesus upon Calvary. Therefore, though his benediction equally included St. Joseph, yet it was to the Mother of God alone that he addressed the prophetic utterance. These words were, for the heart of the Immaculate Virgin, a cause of unspeakable grief, though at the same time of exceeding joy.

In fact, Mary perceived that if Jesus was to be a contradicted sign, it was by reason of the envy of men, which would drive them to such a pitch of malice, as to become guilty of dei-cide. She understood that this persecution must of necessity include herself also, the true Mother of the Redeemer.

But if the Saviour is to be for many an occasion of perdition, He will also prove, for those who are ready and willing to accept His teaching, a source of grace, so that in His name and by His power they will become victors over sin and death. This thought sufficed to console Mary and to animate her for the fulfilment of her mission.

Example The devotion of Pope Clement viii to The Blessed Virgin

Among the Sovereign Pontiffs who have nourished a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin, particular mention must be made of Clement VIII, through whom the picture of Our Lady, venerated in St. Mary Major's at Borne and known as St. Luke's picture, became a center of great devotion.

As soon as he was crowned Pope, he proclaimed a jubilee to all who should visit the chapel where the picture is preserved, and, desiring to give an example of true devotion to the Mother of God, he himself went thrice in procession to visit the shrine, followed by the Sacred College of Cardinals, the Pontifical Court, and a large body of the faithful.

When his nephew, John Francis Aldobrandini was about to set out with an army to help the Hungarians against the Turks, the Holy Pontiff wished to put the valiant soldier under the protection of Our Lady, of whom we read that she is splendid as the sun, beautiful as the moon, and terrible as an army in battle array. To this end he held a solemn ceremony in the Basilica of St. Mary Major, during which, under the motherly regard of our blessed Lady, he appointed Francis general, giving him the banner under which the Christian name was to triumph.

But what especially distinguished the devotion of this Pontiff to our blessed Lady was his custom of going every morning on foot with one of the pontifical household to venerate this shrine in the Church of St. Mary Major. On arriving there, he was wont to go up the steps leading to the Basilica, on his knees, out of reverence for the Mother of God. He used to remain there humbly waiting for the "Angelus" to be rung, at which hour the Basilica would be opened. Then he recited the "Angelus" thus honoring her who is known as the heavenly dawn; after which, he went to prostrate himself before the Sacred Picture, which he contemplated in ecstasy, breathing forth the love of his heart for Mary.

Paul V, who succeeded Clement VIII in the Chair of St. Peter, wished to perpetuate the devotion of his predecessor to this sacred shrine by erecting a splendid monument to his memory in the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin. Prince Marcantonio Borghese had the body of Pope Clement VIII transferred there from the Vatican, so that even in death he might render homage to her, whom he had loved so much in life.

Prayer

O Mary, who hast given us in thy Purification, so bright an example of true and sincere devotion, and whose sweet heart was at once pierced with sorrow and filled with heavenly joy at the prophecy of Simeon, grant that I may imitate thee, and obey the commandments of Jesus, in such wise, that I may have part in the Redemption which He has won for us. Amen.

The Lily Of Israel By The Abbe Gerbet. Part 13.

CHAPTER XI - THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE

BUT, ere the Wise Men came to adore Him, Mary, inspired by the Holy Spirit, Mary, the gentle and humble, desired to take up her ordinary occupations, thus to veil the divine gifts bestowed upon her. As a simple woman, to whom legal purification might have become necessary, in order to wash away the stains which Eve had placed upon such as become both wife and mother, Mary bent her way toward the Temple, accompanied by her grave and dignified spouse, whose presence was safeguard and shield to her and to her Son. The holy Virgin was without spot, immaculate as a lily, perfect as the mystical rose of Sharon, but the wonders of her miraculous motherhood were long to remain hidden from the world.

When Mary entered the Temple, with her Son in her arms, an old man named Simeon—a man most righteous among the righteous—drew near. He had received a promise, through an angel, that he should not die until he had seen the Saviour of the world. When his eyes fell upon the Child, he advanced toward Him and extending his arms, exclaimed, in a trembling voice:

"Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word, in peace. Because my eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples. A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel." (St. Luke ii, 29-32.)

Uttering this canticle of love, the old man raised his trembling hands, and blessed Joseph, Mary, and the divine Infant. But twice he blessed Mary, saying: "Strengthen thy heart by prayer, for thine own soul a sword shall pierce on account of this Child !"

And Anna, daughter of Phanuel, who still lived within the sacred precincts of the Temple, as when Mary served with the consecrated virgins, came also to salute her.

"Behold the young shoot from the house of Jesse, which I promised to you when you left the shelter of the Temple. Do you remember, Mary?"

The Virgin recalled the words worked in embroidery upon the* girdle which Anna had given her and of which, at the time, she had thought but little.

"Your many days of holiness in the house of God have given you great knowledge," she replied.

Anna's eyes were suffused with tears. Putting her arms about the young Virgin, she blessed her.

"Great is the joy in thy heart, O Mary, because the Lord hath wrought glorious things within thee.

But fortify thyself, for on account of this Child thy heart will be pierced with an excess of grief."

"Peace!" said Mary, gently. "Let us leave for each day its own pain and suffering—doubting not that he who hopes in God will have strength for evils as they come."

Thus did she speak to show her trust in the Most High. But the mother-heart within was sorely troubled, and she left the Temple oppressed with sorrow, clasping her beautiful Child to her bosom, wishing, indeed, that she might hide Him therein, to shield and preserve Him from every threatening danger and suffering. The dreadful words of Simeon and Anna had partly opened the door of the future. The opprobrium, the torments, Calvary, the dying moments of that One so well-beloved, seemed to sting her very soul, her tender heart, even as a sharp-edged sword might pierce that heart to its core. At that trying moment she was almost ready to ask God to take her from this world ere that time arrived.

But who would suffer with that dear, that precious, that beloved Son, if His Mother shrank from sharing His grief and torture? And the holy Virgin, in whom were united all the simple and sublime virtues, strengthening herself with love, regained her usual calm by a tremendous effort.

"May the will of God be accomplished toward His Son, and toward me, and toward the whole world! May He sustain me that I may submit to it without a murmur. Who am I to resist God?"

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 37.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 3.

Another optical illusion, which is often repeated in this dry and burning region, made travellers at a distance assume gigantic proportions. Arab horsemen, covered with their flowing cloaks striped brown and white, and armed with the djombie —a dagger with a curved blade, which all the dwellers of the desert wear in their girdles—appeared afar off as tall as towers, and seemed to be moving in the air. The Virgin started, and pressed Jesus more closely to her heart; but the placid countenance of Joseph calmed her fears, although she could not understand the phenomenon which gave rise to them. 1

At the approach of evening, the song of the camel-drivers ceased, 2 the leader of the caravan unfurled the flag which gives notice of the halt, and all the travellers assembled round this signal of order. An animated scene soon followed this halting-time. They unloaded the camels, who were kneeling at the feet of their masters, their burdens were piled up pyramidally; they set up a row of round stakes, to which the beasts of burden were to be tethered ; the rich travellers pitched their tents, and the leader of the caravan placed sentinels to give notice of the approach of the Bedouins, those pirates of the desert, who were, and are still, robbers like Ismael, and hospitable like Abraham. Every merchant, after taking his repast of dates and milk, composed himself to sleep in his tent of mohair till the rising of the moon. The slaves and the poor travellers, in which number were the Son of God, his divine Mother, and Joseph, sat upon a rush mat, spread upon the ground, without any roof but the sky, and felt the icy breeze of the night 3 upon their limbs, languid with heat, and worn out with fatigue. At times was heard a cry of alarm: it was the Arabs of the desert, prowling about the slumbering caravan ; disconcerted by the vigilance of the guards of the camp, they announced their departure by a volley of arrows, accompanied by the groans of the wounded. Then the Virgin, who had made a rampart with her body for her adored Son, raised up to heaven her eyes moist with tears, and her forehead pale with fear; she knew but too well that her Jesus was mortal as well as the least of the children of men !

When the moon diffused her white light over that shadowless and noiseless desert, where the breezes of the solitude found not a blade of grass to raise a sigh, they struck their tents, and the painful march began again, with all the inconveniences, sufferings, and terrors experienced the day before.

At length, they arrived at the extremity of this region of illusions and silence. Egypt, that ancient nursery of every light, and every species of idolatry, presented itself to the travellers, with its obelisks of rose granite, its temples with tops of polished steel, 4  its colossal pyramids, its villages resembling islands, and its providential river, bordered with reeds, and covered with vessels. This country appeared richer, more populous, and more commercial than Judea ; but it was the land of exile! on the other side of the desert was their own country! The hearts of the exiles of Israel had remained there.

After a journey of a hundred and forty leagues, 5 the fugitives reached Heliopolis, where their nation had founded a colony. In that city arose the temple of Jehovah, which Onias had built upon the plan of the holy house. The ornaments of this Egyptian temple were almost equal to those of the other; only, as a sign of inferiority, a massive lamp of gold, suspended from the ceiling supplied the place of the famous candlestick with seven branches at Jerusalem. At the gate of this city, the population of which was in great measure composed of Egyptians and idolatrous Arabs, was a majestic tree, of the mimosa species, to which the Arabs of the Yemen, established on the banks of the Nile, paid a kind of worship. 6 At the approach of the Holy Family, the fetiche tree slowly bent down its shady branches, as if to offer the salam to the young Master of nature, whom Mary carried in her arms ; 7 and, if we may believe the historian Palladius, at the moment when the divine travellers passed under the granite arches of the gate of Heliopolis, all the idols of a neighbouring temple fell on their faces to the ground. 8

Joseph and Mary only passed through the City of the Sun, and repaired to Matarieh, a beautiful village shaded by sycamores, where the only fountain of sweet water in Egypt is found. There, in a dwelling like a bee-hive, where the doves built their nests, the fugitive family reposed in peace, far away from Herod.

This cruel prince, after waiting in vain for the Magi in his palace at Jericho, his favourite residence, learned at length that they had repassed the frontiers of his kingdom, and that, without giving him an account of their mission, they were gone back to the country of the Persians. Pale already from the slow fever which consumed him, the King of the Jews became still paler with wrath. He was deceived at the very moment when he was delighted at the thought of his unequalled cleverness in deceiving others—deceived by these uncircumcised men, who, contrary to all expectation, had found out his tortuous and wily policy! If the Magi had not discovered the child to whom the star had conducted them, they would have told him so on their return.—They had then discovered his secret retirement, and this was somewhere in Bethlehem or its environs, since they had not carried their search any farther.—How was this dangerous child now to be distinguished from common children ?— There was but one last expedient left, one extreme measure to destroy him: this was to include him in one general massacre.—But the people!—At this thought the aged king mused for a moment; then a wild and scornful smile passed over his lips. The people dare nothing, said Herod to himself, against kings who dare everything!

" And sending, he killed all the men-children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men." 9

According to a number of grave authors, 10 who have tradition and probability on their side, the Holy Family remained seven years in Egypt. There are still found traces of their dwelling there: the spring where Mary used to wash the infant's linen; 11 the hill covered with bushes, where she dried it in the sun; the sycamore, in the shade of which she loved to sit with her Son upon her knees, 12 are still there after the lapse of eighteen centuries. The pilgrims of Europe and Asia knew the way to them, and the descendants of the nation of Pharaoh treat them with honour. To every spot some original legend of the olden time is attached, like the moss on the damp wall of a religious ruin. 13

At Nazareth, Mary had led an humble and laborious life, but at Heliopolis she beheld misery in all its aspects. It was necessary to find means of support,—a difficult thing out of one's own country, and among a people parcelled out in national and hereditary corporations, who were by no means fond of strangers. As they were poor, observes St. Basil, it is evident that they most have submitted to painful labour to procure the necessaries of life.—Alas! had they always even these ? " Oftentimes," says Ludolph of Saxony, " did the child Jesus ask his mother for bread, when she could give him nothing but her tears! "

Meanwhile, Herod had died of a horrible and nameless disease, after seeing himself devoured alive by the worms of the tomb. Dwelling to his last breath upon the joy that the people would feel at the news of his decease, he had with tears requested his sister Salome, a wicked woman, to have the flower of the Jewish nobility shot to death with arrows, whom he had imprisoned with this intention, that people might weep at his funeral whether they would or not. 14 He was carried to his castle of Herodion in a golden litter, covered with scarlet and precious stones. His sons and his army followed his bier with downcast looks, while the people, having the happiness of deliverance before their eyes, cast upon him as many maledictions as a cloud showers down drops of rain.

Admonished in a dream, by the angel of the Lord, of the death of the tyrant, Joseph returned with Mary and the child into the land of Israel; " but hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judea in the room of Herod, his father, he was afraid to go thither: and being warned in sleep, he turned aside into the quarters of Galilee."

1 "I had occasion," says Niebuhr, "to remark a phenomenon which struck me as very singular; but which, in time, became familiar to me. An Arab mounted on a camel, whom I saw coming from a distance, appeared to me as tall as a tower, and seemed to move in the air; yet he was marching on the sand like ourselves. This optical illusion proceeds from a stronger refraction of the atmosphere, in these arid regions loaded with vapours of a different nature from those which fill the air of temperate countries."— (Voyage en Arabie, t. i. p. 208.)

2 It is an almost universal custom in the East to enliven one another on the march, or at work, by singing. A Mussulman pilgrim has given a very picturesque description of the nocturnal march of a caravan of Mecca, by the light of lanterns fixed upon the camels, and to the measured singing of the camel-drivers.—(Voyage d'Abdoul Kerim.) The camel-drivers still sing songs peculiar to themselves in Syria and Egypt.—(Correspondance d'Orient, t. vi.)

3 Although the days are scorching in the desert at this season, the nights are very cold.—(Voln.; Sav.)

4 On the dome of the sanctuary of the principal temple of Hiliopolis was observed an immense mirror of polished steel, which reflected the rays of the luminary of heaven. There was a similar one on the top of the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the images of ships were reflected in it long before they appeared in the horizon.— (Correspondance d'Orient, t. v. ; Lettres de Savary.)

5 See Barad., t. i. c. 8.—The author of the Voyages de Jesus Christ reckons only a hundred leagues, but perhaps he takes no account of the windings of the roads.

6 The Arabs, who had gradually forgotten the God of Abraham, adored at that time a number of idols, each more monstrous than the other. "The date-tree," says Azraki, "was adored by the tribe of Khozua, and the Beni-Thekif worshipped a rock ; a large tree named zat arouat was adored by the Koreisch, &c." The Persians scornfully designated the Arabs by the title of " adorers of stones."

7 We are indebted to Sozomen for this event, which it requires some courage to reproduce in this age of mockery, and which, after all, is hardly a miracle. It is certain that there exists in Arabia a tree of the species of the sensitives and mimosas, which bends down its branches at the approach of man. Niebuhr, who is not suspected of credulity, found this tree in the Yemen, and the Arabs, who give it the name of tree of hospitality, hold it in such veneration that it is not lawful to pluck a leaf from it. If this mimosa, by a natural phenomenon, bends down its branches at the approach of man, much* more must it have had cause to lower them at the approach of the Son of God.

8 Palladius is not the only one who relates this miracle; the martyr Dorotheus, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, lira, Dionysius the Carthusian, Testatus, Ludolphus, Barradius, &c, attest it in like manner.

9 This gospel fact, which the school of Voltaire has called in question, is proved, not only by our sacred books, but also by the testimony of Jews and Pagans.—(Macrobius, lib. ari. c. 4, Do Saturnal.; Orig., Contra Celsum, lib. xi. c. 68; Toldos Huldr., pp. 12, 14, 20.)

10 See Trombel, in Vit. Deip.; Zachariam, in Diss, ad Hist. Eccl.; Anselm; Cantual; Euseb.; St. Thorn.

11 This fountain is still called the Fountain of Mary; an ancient tradition records that the Blessed Virgin bathed the infant Jesus in it. In the earliest times of Christianity, the faithful built a church in this place; later on, the Mussulmans constructed a mosque there, and the disciples of both creeds came to pray at the Fountain of Mary for the cure of their maladies; the fountain is still there; the pilgrimages continue, but no vestiges remain either of church or mosque.—(Savary, t. i. p. 122; Corresp. d'Or., t. vi. p. 3.)

12 "Not far from the mountain, I was taken into an enclosure planted with trees; a Mussulman who was our guide stopped us before a sycamore, and said to us, This is the tree of Jesus and Mary. Vanslab, rector of Fontainebleau, informs us that the old sycamore fell down from old age in 1058. The cordeliers of Cairo piously preserved in their sacristy the last remains of this tree; there remained in the garden only a stump, whence, no doubt, came the tree which we saw. General Kleber, after the victory of Heliopolis, would visit as a pilgrim the tree of the Holy Family: he had written his name on the bark of one of the branches: this name has since disappeared, effaced either by time or by some envious hand."—(Corresp. d'Or., t. vi. lettre 141.)

13 The following is one of those legends brought from the lands beyond the sea by one of our good old French barons, the Seigneur d'Englure: we give it with all the original grace of the good old time —" When our Lady, the Mother of God, had passed over the deserts, and when she came to this said place, she laid our Lord down upon the ground, and went about in search of water, but could find none; so she returned full of sorrow to her dear infant, who lay stretched upon the sand, who had dug into the ground with his heels, so that there sprung up a fountain of very good and sweet water. So our Lady was very glad of this, and thanked our Lord for it, and our Lady laid her dear infant down again, and washed the little clothes of our Lord in the water of this fountain, and then spread them out on the ground to dry; and from the water which ran off" these little clothes, as it dried up, there grew from each drop a shrub, which shrubs yield balsam, &c."

14 Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. xrii. c. 8.—The memory of Herod remained in such execration among the princes of the people and the priests, that they instituted a feast, which was celebrated on the 2oth of September, out of joy that he was dead. " There is a feast on the 7th of Chisleu," says the Jewish calendar," on account of the death of Herod; for he had hated the wise, and we rejoice before the Lord when the wicked depart out of this world."—(Basn., t. i. liv. ii. c. 8.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 36.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 2.

The presence of the Messias, who inflamed the heart of the disciples at Emmaus, even before they had recognised their Master in the breaking of bread, beamed upon the soul of the Aaronites, as the ray of spring glistens on the eternal snows of Ararat. That solemn moment, which suspended the sacred concerts round the throne of God, and fixed the eyes of the heavenly host on a single point of the universe, that moment announced by Aggeus, when the glory of the second temple effaced that of the first, passed unperceived before the darkened eyes of the priests and doctors. None of them recognised " the pure and never sullied oblation" which Malachy had predicted. The desired of nations, He whose way had been prepared by angels, the great Redeemer so long promised and expected, was there bodily present, in his holy house, and no one thought to welcome him with palms, crying out upon the battlements of the temple and the roofs of Jerusalem, " Hosanna to the Son of David!" They knew well, says the gospel, how to prognosticate the approach of rain by the clouds which gathered in the west; they knew well how to foresee heat when the south wind blew; but these men, so skilful in drawing presages from the different aspects of the sky, did not see " that the fig-tree of Solomon was about to put forth its figs," 1 and the child of the people did not lead them to presage the God. 0 poverty, how excellent a disguise art thou, even for the divine nature! The true Christ was in the midst of his own; but he was poor, and his own received him not: therefore have they remained without a Saviour; for no Melech-Hamaschiak has come to justify their incredulous contempt for the divine Son of the Virgin, and they are on this account reduced to say, with cold and despairing rage, " Perish those who calculate the time of the Messias !" 2

Meanwhile the infant God, who had recognised as he passed through the streets of Jerusalem the sites of our redemption, counted his executioners in silence in this grave and glittering assemblage; among the choirs who sung to the harp hymns of praise to the Eternal, Christ distinguished the arrogant and malevolent voices which should cry out later on, " Crucify him ! crucify him!"

Race of Aaron, where art thou now ? The avenging breath of the Crucified has scattered thee like chaff in every part of the globe; absorbed in those masses which thou despisedest, the companions of thy exile no longer know thee! But at that time, little troubled about that future which was lowering over their heads, the Hebrew priests offered to the God who rejected them the chosen victims of the great and of the common people. One of them took the doves from Joseph, mounted the general ascent of the altar of holocausts, and offered to the Lord this poor and simple sacrifice.

"And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord," says St. Luke, "they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth." 3

Where shall they take the frugal repast, to recruit their strength ? 4

Tradition is silent as to a great part of this affecting and perilous journey. No doubt the holy travellers made long and painful marches across the mountains, taking advantage of the earliest hours of daylight, and often waiting, too, for the rising of the moon to proceed on their way. As long as they were passing through Galilee, the deep caverns which are sunk in it, caverns of unknown windings, where it is easy to hide from all observation, afforded them a place to stop and repose : but these dens with hollow sides had their dangers too; for numerous and predatory bands, who had long defied all the forces of the kingdom, and who were emboldened to reappear by the sickness of Herod, 5 chose them by preference for their places of security. The fear of penetrating unconsciously into one of these resorts of assassins must have made Joseph hesitate more than once at the sheltering openings of these isolated caverns.

At length, after a thousand inconveniences of every kind, the Holy Family had reached the environs of Jerusalem. Here precautions and uneasiness were multiplied by reason of the imminence of danger; the fugitives no longer dared to come near towns, nor even populous villages, where numbers of spies and informers had their eye upon strangers: 6 they followed the bed of torrents, dived into deserted roads, or the damp shade of woods, not daring to go far out of the way to renew their exhausted provisions, and suffering at once from fear, cold, and hunger They had passed by Anathoth, and were moving in the direction of Ramla, to descend into the plains of Syria. Anxious to get out of a dangerous neighbourhood, they had borrowed some hours of the night, when they saw some armed men issue forth from a dark ravine, who stopped their passage. He who appeared to be the chief of this troop of bandits came forward from the hostile group to inspect the travellers. Joseph and Mary had stopped, and looked at each other with alarm: Jesus was asleep. The robber, who had come to take blood and gold, looked with astonishment at this old man, unarmed, just like a patriarch of olden times; at this young woman, covered with a veil, who seemed anxious to hide her child from him in her heart, so closely did she press him painfully to her breast. " They are poor," said the robber to himself, " and travel by night, like fugitives!" He too, perhaps, had a son in the cradle; perhaps the atmosphere of meekness and mercy which surrounded Jesus and Mary acted upon this ferocious soul: he lowered the point of his lance, and holding out a friendly hand to Joseph, he offered him a lodging for the night in his fortress, suspended upon the corner of a rock, like the nests of birds of prey. This offer, honestly made, was accepted with holy confidence, and the roof of the robber afforded hospitality, on this occasion, as well as the tent of the Arab. 7 The next day, towards noon, the Holy family stopped at the extremity of a vast forest of palm-trees, nopals, and wild fig-trees, which extends at a short distance from Ramla; 8 a carpet of everlasting flowers, narcissuses, and anemones received the Sovereign of heaven and earth; the heats of summer ruled in the plain, and the warbling of birds, the perfume of plants, the tufted shade of fig-trees, and the distant bubbling of a spring, acted as a charm on the sleep of Christ. After a short rest, the moments of which were counted, the travellers proceeded on their journey. Their motive for moving towards Bethlehem is unknown; tradition has preserved the memory of their passing by it, and the Christians have erected an altar in the cave where Mary concealed her infant, 9 while Joseph went up to the town, either to inquire for the departure of a caravan, or to exchange the slow travelling beast which had carried the Blessed Virgin for a camel. Whatever was the motive which led Joseph and Mary to the crater of a volcano, there is no doubt that they stayed there but a few hours, and that they made haste to reach a maritime town of the Philisthines, to join the first caravan going to Egypt.

If we rely on the learned calculations of chronologists, who allow of no interval in this long journey, the holy pair must have found a caravan on the point of starting, on the coast of Syria. This is the more probable, as the vernal equinox was at hand, and every one would be anxious to anticipate the season when the simoom exercises its empire over the desert, and makes its sea of sand as treacherous as the waves themselves. 10 Excepting the mortal apprehension of the enraged pursuit of Herod, the second part of the journey of the Holy Family did not yield to the first in fatigue or suffering or even in danger. On quitting Gaza, the ruined towers of which resounded with the dying sound of the waves, the travellers beheld nothing before them but immense solitudes of sand, of a dreary aspect and frightful barrenness, ploughed up by the hot wind of the desert, and oppressed by a fiery sky. No vegetation, except a few thin patches of heath, growing here and there on the lonely plain; no water except the brackish spring where the Virgin and Joseph, who were weary, who were poor, and whom no one cared for, could not quench their thirst till after the rich merchants, their slaves, and camels had exhausted it, and there remained of this poor muddy water barely enough to fill the hollow of one's hand. The farther they went from the frontiers of Syria, the more did they feel thirst, and the springs were more scarce. At times, they discerned at a distance, in the middle of a boundless plain, a large blue clear lake, like the lake of Genesareth; the sky was reflected in its limpid waters, in which a solitary date-palm beheld its own image. A cry of joy hailed this discovery; they urged on the speed of the camels, and Mary raised her drooping head, like a rose of Jericho which foretells rain. 11 They were close upon this blessed lake, and already slaking their thirst in imagination; but, oh wretched fate ! a mocking demon transported the lake some leagues farther on, and left nothing in its place but parched-up sand ! 12

1 St. Luc, c. 12, v. 55 et. 56. et c. xxii. v. 29, 30.

2 Basn., liv. vi. c. 26. Talmud, 349.

3 We have followed the opinion of St Luke, St. John Chrysostom, and some other authorities, in making the Holy Family leave for Nazareth after the Purification. This is the only way to reconcile St. Matthew—who says nothing of the marvellous events of the Presentation in the temple—with St. Luke, who is silent on the massacre of the Innocents, and the flight into Egypt. " What then shall we say ? " says St. John Chrysostom, " that St. Luke calls this the time, describing that which preceded the descent into Egypt. For he did not lead them thither before the Purification, lest the law should be in any way infringed; but he waited till the Purification should be accomplished, and they should have returned to Nazareth, and then they were to go down into Egypt."—(Horn. ix. in St Matt)

4 S. Bonav., De Vita Christi.

5 These large armies, often two or three thousand strong, were commanded by experienced chiefs, who gave Herod and the Romans full occupation. Some had a political aim, and made, party war; others were only a mere collection of assassins, who carried long daggers under their cloaks, and killed those whom they wished to get rid of, even in the streets of Jerusalem.—(De Bello, lib. ii. c. 5.)

6 Herod, who brought espionage to perfection in the East, covered the great roads with spies in every part of Judea.—(Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. zv. o. 13.)

7 The site -where the local tradition has placed this scene, and where the ruins of the fortress of the banditti are still visible, continues to be very ill-famed. During the crusades, the Franks, to whom this tradition was familiar, had exalted the banditti chief to a feudal lord. "It is rare, however," says F. Nau, with amusing gravity, "that a lord of note becomes a highway robber." The crusaders were better versed in history than F. Nau. To this history, which seems authentic, has been added an embellishment, for which we cannot answer, asserting that the hospitable robber was the good thief in person.

8 The spot fixed by tradition as one of the resting-places of the Holy Family is very charming; the ruins of a monastery are still seen there.—(Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, t. ii.)

9 This cave is called the Grotto of the Virgins  Milk, because it is supposed that some drops of milk of the Mother of God fell upon the rock, while she suckled the infant Jesus.

10 " The Arabs call the hot wind of the desert simoom, or poison: the impression it makes may be compared to that received from the mouth of a large oven when the bread is drawn. These winds prevail most frequently during the fifty days which comprise the equinoxes." (Volney, Voyage en Syrie.)

11 This rose, the cup of which opens and shuts according to the variations of the atmosphere, is consulted as a barometer by the Arabs.—(The Viscount Marcellus, in his Voyage en Orient, t ii.)

12 This is the phenomenon known by the name of mirage. During the expedition which the French made in Egypt in 1798, the soldiers, traversing the arid deserts of that burning country, parched with thirst, were often deceived by this cruel illusion. Every prominent object which offered itself to their eyes in the midst of these seas of sand, appeared to them surrounded with water: thus a hillock, which they perceived at a distance, seemed to them to rise out of the midst of a lake. Dying with want they ran towards it; but, when they arrived at the place itself, they discovered their mistake: the lake had fled, and appeared yet farther off to theirs eager eyes.—(See de Fellens, du Mirage. Art. 6.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 35.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 1.

Forty days after the birth of our Saviour, the Virgin considered it her duty to repair to Jerusalem, to obey the precept of Leviticus, which prescribed the purification of mothers, and the ransom of the first-horn. Doubtless this law did not oblige Mary; for if she had been a mother for our Redeemer, she had remained a virgin for herself, and her conception without stain had been followed by a parturition without defilement: " but she submitted voluntarily, for an example to the world, to a penal law to which she was only so far subject," says Bossuet, "as her virginal maternity was unknown."

Poorly equipped, and lost in the crowd on their first appearance upon the dusty road of Ephrata, Joseph and Mary, who had not attracted any notice, had not either left behind them those long recollections which pass into tradition among nations. It was different on their return to Jerusalem; thanks, no doubt, to the miraculous recitals of the shepherds, and the • brilliant visit of the Magi. At some distance from Bethlehem, Mary rested beneath a turpentine-tree to give the breast to her divine Infant, and this tree, according to the common belief, had from that time a hidden virtue which effected, during sixteen centuries, a multitude of wonderful cures. This, at least, is related by the Christians of Asia and the Turks, to whom this tree was still, two centuries ago, an object of veneration and a term of pilgrimage. 1

After this halt, the memory of which is preserved, the holy spouses arrived at the tomb of Rachel, 2 where every Hebrew was bound to pray as be passed. This tumulus of primitive times, which was composed of twelve great stones eaten by moss, upon each of which was read the name of a tribe of Israel, had no epitaph but a white rose of Syria; sweet and frail emblem of the beauty of that young woman, who faded at the moment when she had just blossomed, like the flower spoken of by Job. As they stopped to say the prayer for the dead over the revered dust of one of the saints of their nation, the Virgin and Joseph little thought that the plaintive cries of the dove which the Scripture attributes to this fair Assyrian, would so soon be applicable; and that the mother of 'Joseph and Benjamin was the desolate type of mothers who would bewail, some days afterwards, upon the mountains of Judea, their children massacred instead of Jesus Christ.

On leaving the valley of Rephaim, whose old oaks overshadowed the grassy tombs of the giants of the race of Enac, the virgin perceived a tree of forbidding aspect, the sight of which afflicted her heart. It was a barren olive-tree, which spread its pale foliage to the breezes of the night, and the mournful noise of which resembled the moaning of some human being. As she passed under its melancholy branches, which no bird of heaven enlivened with its song, Mary felt that sensation of poisonous cold diffused by the fatal shade of the manchineel-tree. This tree, if the local tradition was not mistaken, was the "infamous" wood on which Christ was nailed.

At the very moment when Joseph and Mary made their way into the second inclosure, with the sides of silver for the ransom and the doves for sacrifice, a holy old man, named Simeon, 3 to whom it had been divinely revealed that he should not die till he had seen Christ the Lord, came into the portico by inspiration of the Spirit of God. At the sight of the Holy Family, the eye of the just man became inspired; discovering the King Messias beneath the poor swaddling-clothes of the people, he took him from the arms of his mother, lifted him on to his face, and began to contemplate him with emotion, while tears of joy rolled down his venerable cheeks. " Now," cried out the pious old man, raising up his streaming eyes to heaven, " now thou dost dismiss thy servant, 0 Lord, according to thy word, in peace; because my eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." As he finished these words, Simeon solemnly blessed the holy pair; and then addressing himself to Mary, after a mournful and grave silence, he added that this child, born for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel, would be a sign of contradiction to men, and that sorrow should pierce the soul of his mother like the sharp point of a sword.

By this unexpected light, which shed a sombre gleam over the great destiny of Christ, the ignominies, the sufferings, and agonies of the cross, were disclosed at once to the Blessed Virgin. The inauspicious words of Simeon, like a stormy wind, made her bend down her head, and her heart was painfully oppressed. 4 But Mary knew how to accept, without complaint and without murmur, all that came to her from God; her pale lips were placed upon this chalice of wormwood and gall; she drained it even to the dregs, and then said, sweetly, as she dried up her tears, " O Lord, thy will be done! " At that moment the daughter of Abraham was exalted above the head and father of her people; she, too, sacrificed her son upon the altar of the Lord, but she had the sad assurance that the sacrifice would be accepted,— and she was a mother !

She was still pondering in her mind these deep thoughts, when a prophetess came in, named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser, who was far advanced in years. This holy widow departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving God night and day. At the sight of the divine Infant, she began to praise the Lord aloud, and to speak of him to those who looked for the redemption of Israel.

" Not only," says St. Ambrose on this subject, " does the generation of the Lord receive testimony from angels, and prophets, and shepherds, but also from the aged and the just. Every age, and both sexes, and the miracles of events attest it. A Virgin brings forth, one that was barren becomes a mother, the dumb speaks, Elizabeth prophesies, the Magian adores, he who is shut up in the womb leaps for joy, the widow proclaims, the just expects."

As the farthest court of the temple was forbidden to Mary, and as the infant, on account of his sex, was to be offered there to the Lord, Joseph himself carried him into the court of the first-born, asking himself at the same time whether the scenes which had taken place at the entrance of Jesus into the holy house would be renewed in the compartment of the Hebrew priests. But nothing discovered the infant God in this privileged part of the temple; everything there remained sad and frozen beneath the rising ray of the young Sun of justice. A priest unknown to Joseph received in a desultory manner from the rough hands of the man of the people, whom he regarded as the " offscouring of the world," 5 the timid birds ordained by the law, and did not even deign to honour Christ with a single look. The love of gold— that shameful idolatry, which hides its unacknowledged worship in the shade as long as it retains enough shame to blush —had changed into hard stone the narrow, egotistical, and malignant heart 6 of the princes of the synagogue. Leaving the monopoly of labour and privations to the simple Levites, whom they reduced to live upon herbs and dried figs, 7 they passed by the poor man stretched upon their marble thresholds, and the traveller wounded in the mountain pathway, turning their heads away with indifference ; in reality they loved neither God nor men. And with this does our Lord, who himself instituted a priesthood exclusively of charity, reproach them, with holy and piercing irony, in the parable of the Samaritan. Therefore, as Malachy had announced, " God cursed their benedictions," and turned away his face from their temple, which he was soon to deliver up to the sword and fire of the Romans.

1 This tree, under which Mary rested to give Jesus the breast, was destroyed during the century before the last, hut the memory of the place where it was is still preserved.

2 According to the Jewish doctors, Jacob buried his beloved wife on the road to Bethlehem, only because his prophetic knowledge led him to discover that a portion of his descendants would follow this road as captives of the Assyrians, and because he wished that Rachel might intercede for them to Jehovah, as they passed before her tomb. The Protestants have declaimed strongly against the Talmudists on account of this passage, which favours the intercession of the Virgin and of the saints. This tomb of Rachel was in such veneration, that all the Jews who passed by it made it a religious duty to engrave their names on one of the stones: these enormous stones were twelve in number.—(Talm. de Jer.) We know that the tears of Rachel, spoken of by Jeremias, were only a figure of the tears shed by the Jewish women after the massacre of the innocents.—(St. Matt. xi. 17,18.)

3 The Arabs give Simeon the title of Siddik (he who verifies), because he bore witness to the coming of the true Messias, in the person of Jesus, the son of Mary, whom all Mussulmans are obliged to receive as such.—'D'Herb., Biblioth. Orientale, t. iii. p. 266.)

4 "Mary, my sovereign," says St. Anselm on this subject, "I cannot believe that you could have lived a moment with such sorrow, had not God strengthened you, who gives life."

5 Prideaux, History of the Jews.

6 The Jewish doctors had then, and still have, a maxim which fills us with horror : they hold that he who does not nourish his hatred, and avenge himself, is unworthy of the name of rabbin. (Basn., liv. vi. c. 17.)

7 The luxury and avarice of the chief priests of Jerusalem were incredible. The pontiffs sent people into the country to take the tithes in the granaries, and appropriate them to themselves, which left the inferior priests to die of hunger. At the least remonstrance the miserable Levites were accused of revolt and insubordination, and delivered up to the Romans : the governor Felix alone cast forty of them into prison, out of complaisance to the doctors and princes of the synagogue.—(Josephus, Vita.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 11.

Chapter 4

The Presentation Part 3

The ceremony of the Presentation certainly took place in the court of the women, and not in the actual interior of the sanctuary, where some authors have located it. It began by a sacrifice. The gate of Nicanor, silently rolling on its brazen hinges to let the victim pass in, showed a perspective view of the farthest space, quite like a marvellous vision of that Eden so much regretted, whose golden palaces, overshadowed by lofty cedars, were the habitations of the Just, as the Pharisees taught. 1 Through the marble columns of a superb portico, from the top of which hung down the gigantic branches and pendant clusters of a golden vine, was discovered an edifice which seemed at first sight to be of massive gold, so strong was the glare which was cast by so many dazzling plates covering its facade of a hundred cubits beneath the pure and powerful light of the sun of Asia. An incredible number of votive offerings, where ears of wheat, lilies, pomegranates, vine-leaves formed of emeralds, topazes, carbuncles, and rubies, according to their colours, were intermingled, were fastened to the temple by golden cords; and when the rushing wind of the mountains began to blow, they might have been taken for real flowers, such was their exquisite workmanship and perfect imitation. At different distances were seen banners shot through with arrows, and stained with idolatrous blood, which the Asmonean princes, heroes of imperishable memory, had won from the Greeks of Syria in the glorious wars of independence, and consecrated with their priestly and warrior hands to the God of hosts. Herod, a cruel prince, but a valiant captain, had added to them the standards lately taken in his fortunate expeditions against the Arabs; and the sight of these trophies of arms filled with patriotic pride and warlike ardour those Hebrew hearts who cared so little for death, when they had to fight for what was dearer to them than gold, their families, or their life—the temple!

The priests and Levites assembled in the last compartment received from the hands of Joachim the victim of prosperity 2 These ministers of the living God had not their foreheads bound with laurel or green smallage, like the priests of the idols; a kind of mitre of a round shape, of very thick linen -cloth, a linen tunic, long, white, and without folds, fastened with a broad girdle, embroidered with hyacinth and purple, -composed the priestly costume, which was worn only in the temple. One of the priests took the lamb, and after a short invocation of the God of Jacob, slew it, turning its head towards the north; the blood, which flowed into a brazen vessel, was poured out here and there around the altar. When these first rites were terminated, the priest laid out upon a golden plate a portion of the flesh of the victim, still quivering, and part of the entrails, which the Levites had carefully washed in the fountain-court; he wrapped up the oblation in a double covering of fat, covered it with incense, threw upon it the salt of the covenant, then, ascending barefooted the gentle rise which led up to the platform of the brazen altar, he there deposited the offering upon the billets of wood, perfectly sound and stripped of their bark, which fed the sacred fire. The rest of the victim, except the breast and the right shoulder, which belonged to the priests, was returned to the husband of St. Ann, that he might make a feast with it for his friends and relatives, according to the custom. 3

The last sounds of the trumpets of the priests were dying away along the porticoes, and the sacrifice was still burning on the brazen altar, when a priest came down into the court of the women to conclude the ceremonial. Ann, followed by Joachim, carrying Mary in her arms, came forward with a veil over her head, towards the minister of the Most High, and if we may believe an Arab tradition which Mahomet himself has recorded in the Koran, she presented to him the young handmaid of the Lord, saying, with a voice full of emotion, "I come to offer you the present which God has made me." 4

The priest accepted, in the name of God, who makes the-womb of mothers fruitful, the precious deposit which gratitude confided to him, and blessed Joachim, as well as his pious company; 5 then stretching out his hands over the assembly, which bowed down over the pontifical benediction, 6 "O Israel," said he, "may the Lord direct his light towards thee—may he make thee to prosper in everything, and grant thee peace!" A canticle of thanksgiving, harmoniously accompanied by the harps of the priests, terminated the Presentation of the Virgin.

Such was the ceremony which took place, in the latter days of November, in the holy temple of Sion. Men, who usually stop at the surface, beheld nothing but a young child, very beautiful and wonderfully fervent, consecrated by her mother to that God who had granted her to her prayers and tears; but the angels of heaven, who hovered over the sanctuary, discovered in that weak and gentle creature the Virgin of Isaias, the spouse of whom Solomon had sung the mystical espousals, the celestial Eve who came to impart to a fallen race the hope of a glorious immortality. Penetrated with joy to see at length the aurora shine forth of the day of the Messias, "they united," say certain ancient authors,7 " with this feast of earth, and covering the young descendant of David with their white wings, they scattered under her feet the odoriferous flowers of Paradise, and celebrated her entry into the temple with melodious concerts."

What passed then in the soul of Mary, in that soul sweetly expanded to the breath of the sanctifying Spirit, where all was peace, pure love, and light ? By what sacred ties did she unite herself to Him, who had preferred her to the -virgins and queens of so many nations? This is a secret between herself and God; but we may reasonably believe that never was oblation more favourably received; and St. Evodius of Antioch, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, St. Andrew of Crete, and a multitude of Latin fathers, agree in considering the consecration of the Virgin as the most pleasing act of religion in the sight of God which man had hitherto performed.

The name of the priest who received the Blessed Virgin among the number of daughters of the Lord is not known; St. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and George of Nicomedia, incline to the belief that it was the father of St. John the Baptist: the ties of relationship which connected Zachary with the family of Joachim, the high rank which ho then occupied in the priesthood, 8 and the tender affection which Mary cherished for him and for Elizabeth, impart to this supposition a high degree of probability.

Be this as it may, the blessed daughter of Joachim was solemnly admitted into the number of the almas, or young virgins, who were brought up under the sacred shadow of the altar.

That Mary spent her best years in the temple is proved by apostolic tradition, by the writings of the fathers, and the opinion of the Church, who is not used to sanction doubtful facts; 9 nevertheless, certain heretics have allowed themselves to treat this circumstance as fabulous, and some Catholic authors themselves have considered it an obscure point, concealed beneath the veil of olden times, which it was very difficult to clear up. The denials of the former surprise us but little, bat the circumspection of the others is strange indeed; for if ever a Christian tradition possessed a character of authenticity it is this. St. Evodius, who was the first to relate, in an epistle entitled Lumen, which Nicephorus has preserved for us, this glorious circumstance of the infancy of the Virgin, flourished at the very time of the apostles and of the Mother of God. He was Bishop of Antioch, a town of Syria, to which both Jews and Christians resorted; and the temple where the newly-formed faithful followed, with profound veneration, the traces of the Son of God and his divine Mother, still subsisted in all its glory. This tradition, which came from the church of Jerusalem,— a church composed of the first disciples of Jesus Christ, among whom were found a number of relatives of the Virgin and of St. Joseph,—was consecrated very early by a religious memorial; a demonstrative proof in the eyes of Protestants themselves. 10 In fine, the greater number of the fathers, 11 and especially St. Jerom, who lived in the midst of the sites of our redemption, and where the traditions were yet recent, have recorded it, and held it to be true. This traditional belief may therefore be ranked in the number of the best established facts of history.

1 The Jews believed that the souls of the saints go into the garden of Eden, the entrance of which is forbidden to the living by the angel of death. They are magnificent in the description of this locality, where they place palaces built of precious stones, and, rivers of perfumed waters. In hell, on the contrary, a river of fire falls upon the damned, who suffer the extremes of heat and cold.—(Maimonides, Menasses, &c.)

2 Whether a favour was asked of God, or he was thanked for one obtained, it was called " a sacrifice of prosperity.''

3 This feast, reputed sacred, might he kept for two days together;but the law expressly forbade anything to be reserved from it for the third day, and it must be given even to the last morsel to the poor, for two reasons, says Philo: the first, because, as the victim belonged to God, who is in his nature liberal, it was his will that the needy should partake of it; the second, to hinder avarice, which is a vice of slaves, from creeping in, and dishonouring a holy practice.—(Philo, Tract, de Sacrif. c. 2.)

4 According to a Mahometan tradition, when St. Ann had given birth to the Blessed Virgin, she presented her to the priests, saying these words, which are also found in the Koran: " Dhouncon hadih alnedhirat," that is "Behold the offering which I make you." Hossein Vaez adds to these words in his Persian paraphrase, " Kih esan Khodii," which means, " For it is a present which God has made me," or, still more literally, " For it is from this present that God is to come."—(D'Herbelot, Bibl. Orient, t. ii. p. 620.)

5 Heli blessed Elcana and his wife, and he said to Elcana, "The Lord give thee seed of this woman, for the loan thou hast lent to the Lord. And they went to their own home."—(1 Kings i. 20.) See F. Croiset upon this ceremony.—(Exercises de Pi£te, t. xviii. p. 48.)

6 While the pontiff gave the blessing, the people were obliged to place their hands over their eyes and hide their faces, because it was not lawful to behold the hands of the priest: the Jews imagined that God was behind the pontiff, and looked upon them through his outstretched hands; they did not dare to lift up their eyes to him, " for jio one can see God and live."— (Basn., liv. vii. c. 15.)

7 St Andrew of Crete, and St. George of Nicomedia.

8 The Jews believed that St. John Baptist was much greater than. Jesus Christ, because he was the son of a high priest.— (St. J. Chrysost., Serm. 12, in Matt.)

9 In 1373, Philip de Maziere, a French nobleman, chancellor of the King of Cyprus, came to the court of Charles V., and related to him that in the East, where he had lived a long time, the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin was annually celebrated, in memory of her having been presented in the temple at the age of three years. Philip added, " I reflected that this great feast was not known in the Western church, and when I was ambassador from the King of Cyprus to the pope, I spoke to him about this festival, and presented him the office of it; he had it carefully examined by the cardinals, prelates, and doctors of theology, and permitted the feast to be celebrated." The Greeks kept it early under the title of the " Entrance of the Blessed Virgin into the Temple:" mention is made* of it in their most ancient martyrologies.

10 Gibbon himself could not help acknowledging the authenticity of the religious traditions in Palestine. " They (the Christians) fixed, by unquestionable tradition, the scene of each memorable event" (c. xxiii.): an avowal of considerable weight in the mouth of a writer so well informed as the English historian, and a man at the same time so little disposed in favour of religion. According to M. do Chateaubriand, if there is anything well proved upon earth, it is the authenticity of the Christian traditions at Jerusalem.

11 St. Epiphanius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, George of Nicomedia, St John Damascen, &c.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 10.

Chapter 4

The Presentation Part 2

This temple of the God of hosts, where the Virgin then presented herself, like the dove of the ark with the olive branch, had undergone numerous vicissitudes. One of the ancestors of Mary, the wise son of King David, had made it the wonder of the East. He had lavished about it the gold of Ophir, the perfumes of Saba, the cedar of Libanus, the brass which the fleets of Tyre—that queen of the seas, whose merchants were princes—had gone in quest of to barbarous regions, and silver, so common at that time that it had become of little value; but this splendour had passed away like a vision of the night, thanks to the burning avarice of the people of Egypt and Chaldea. Despoiled twenty times over, but always re-established with magnificence, it had risen again from its ruins under Zorobabel, who had rebuilt it, sword in hand, in spite of the efforts of a multitude of jealous nations. Nevertheless, the second temple, notwithstanding its unheard-of richness, was every way inferior to the other in grandeur as well as in holiness. It was in vain that the Jews poured out there with a liberal hand the strength of the corn and the blood of the vine; that streams of gold arriving from all points of the horizon came to feed incessantly its sacred treasury; that pagan kings, confessing the awful sanctity of the God of Israel, sent thither the most magnificent offerings. 1 Nothing of all this could supply for the absence of the ark, with which had disappeared the tables of the law—that is to say, the will of God, written by himself by the glare of the lightning on Mount Sinai; the rod of the almond-tree which had miraculously blossomed; the most ancient title of the sons of Aaron to the office of high priesthood; and the manna of the desert, which, by the miracle of its long preservation, confirmed so many ancient prodigies wrought for the deliverance of Israel. These precious things were lost, as well as the sacred fire, which the breezes of the holy mountain alone could enkindle on the brazen grate of the altar of holocausts ; and the oil of unction, composed by Moses, whence the priests and kings derived their noble title of the anointed of the Lord. What was still more to be regretted, was that the Schekina, that white cloud which attested the divine presence, had never shown itself in the second temple, and that even the stones of the rational, that last and brilliant oracle of the God of hosts, had lost their prophetic lustre. 2 This is what filled the hearts of the sons of Aaron with bitterness, when they compared the house of Zorobabel with the temple of the son of David; this made the doctors of the law say that the fulfilment of the celebrated prophecy of Aggeus was hopeless, unless the Messias himself should appear bodily in the second temple.

After passing that magnificent gate of Corinthian brass, which twenty Levites could hardly close at night, and which opened of itself four years before the destruction of Jerusalem, to the great consternation of the deicidal people whom this gloomy presage filled with terror, 3 Mary and her parents found themselves in a vast enclosure paved with black and white stones, and surrounded by tall porticoes, which in time of war served as ramparts. 4 A crowd of strangers and people of the nation, whose brilliant costumes of opposite colours reminded one of an immense parterre of tulips, were walking and conversing in this forum of Jerusalem, which was not reputed sacred, and which was called the Court of the Gentiles, because idolaters could not advance farther under pain of death. 5
At some distance from the crowd, under the porch of Solomon, the haughty aristocracy of Israel, clothed in purple and scarlet, or wearing those long Babylonian robes embroidered with flowers of gold, were waiting for the hour of prayer, keeping aloof from the foreigners with a haughty reserve, considerably mingled with contempt. Joachim, who was equal to the princes of his nation in nobility of race, although he had not their wealth, directed his steps that way, sure of being well received; for those Jews, so disdainful towards the Gentiles, 6 loved each other as brethren, especially when they belonged to the same lineage. Scarcely had they perceived them, when a number of illustrious ladies, warriors, and great lords of the family of David advanced to meet them, and after the customary salutations, they joined the family from Galilee, as if to form an honourable train of attendants for Mary. 7 The fathers who relate this circumstance, have piously believed that these great personages, the flower of the Jewish nobility, were not found there by mere chance, but that God, who would provide a triumphal entry into his temple for the future Mother of the Messias, had divinely inspired them with the resolution to come thither.
From the midst of the Court of the Gentiles arose two other enclosures—both sacred—which composed the temple. Seen from below, this majestic and splendid edifice presented a quadrangular mass of building, the walls of which, white as alabaster, were pierced with ten superb gates, covered with thick plates of silver and gold. As the temple, properly so called, crowned the summit of Mount Moria,—a site appropriate for the habitation of the God of tJie hilh, —the ground was a continued ascent, and the walls were completely surrounded by marble steps, which somewhat diminished their height.
After ascending the steps of the temple, the group already purified, in the midst of whom was that blessed child who was to be consecrated to God, stopped for a moment on the small platform of Chel. 8 There the Pharisees displayed their tephilim, 9  and wound round their foreheads, bowed down, 10 a lappet of their taled, of white and fine wool, 11 ornamented with purple pomegranates, and little cords of the colour of the hyacinth. The brave captains of Herod half concealed their shining cuirasses beneath their long mantles, and the daughters of Sion enveloped themselves more closely in the folds of their veils of purple, sky-blue, or Syrian gauze, with flowers of gold, out of respect for the holy angels who had the charge of guarding the sanctuary. 12 This done, they entered the temple by the oriental gate, the most beautiful of all,—that one which poured streams of liquid gold when the Romans, unable to force it by the aid of iron, opened it by means of fire. 13
In our cold northern regions, vast edifices are requisite to protect us from the injuries of the weather; thus we have immense cathedrals, capable of containing whole populations; but in ancient Asia the temples were almost exclusively for the use of the priests: the people used to pray outside. In Israel the engdah, or sacred assembly, was usually held in the court of the women: the second division was so called because the Jewish women, whom the severity of the old law made like to slaves, could not advance farther. Separated from their children and their husbands, who remained in the area of the court, or under the arcades of the peristyle during the ceremonies of religion, they prayed separately in upper galleries, with their heads humbly bent towards the house of Jehovah, of which they could see at some distance the magnificent roof of cedar, bristling all over with pinnacles of gold. 14

1 In Josephus may be seen the detailed description of the magnificent table of massive gold encrusted with precious stones, and the no-less splendid vessels which Ptolemy Philadelphus gave to the temple; almost ail the princes of Asia had enriched it with their gifts, and about the time of the Presentation of the Virgin, the Empress Livia sent thither, in her own name and in the name of Augustus, magnificent vessels of gold.—(Josephus, de Bello, lib. ii. c. 17; Philo, ad Cajum.)

2 God employed the precious stones which the high priest wore upon the rational to foretell victory; for, before the army took the field, there shone forth from them so bright a light, that the people knew thereby that his sovereign Majesty was present, and ready to assist them; but when I began to write this, the rational had ceased to give this light for two hundred years.—(Fl. Joseph., Ant. Jud., lib. iii. c. 8.)

3 Joseph., de Bello, lib. vi.

4 Tacit., Historiarum, lib. v.

5 Joseph., de Bello, lib. v. et vi.

6 Basnage remarks that at the time of Jesus Christ the Jews regarded the Gentiles as dogs, and hated them mortally. "If the idolaters drown themselves, the doctors taught, they must not be pulled out of the water, nor succoured; the only favour that can be done them is not to plunge them deeper into the water, down the precipice, or in the well, if they have fallen in."—(Basn., liv. v. c. 25.)

7 "Primarios quoque Hierosolymitas viros et mulieres interfuisse huic deductioni, succinentibus universis angelis."—(Isid. de Thess.)

8 The Chel, was a space of ten cubits between the Court of the Gentiles and that of the women.

9 The tephilim were small pieces of parchment on which were written, with ink made on purpose, four sentences of Scripture; the Jews wore them at the bend of the left arm, And in the middle of the forehead. These tephilim or phylacteries, were much in use at the time of Jesus Christ, for they made of them marks of distinction, which drew upon them his reproaches.— (Basnage, Hist. Juifs, liv. vii. c. 17.)

10 The Pharisees walked always with their heads down, to affect a more humble countenance; and sometimes even with their eyes shut, to avoid seeing what might prove a temptation: thus it very often happened that in passing through the streets they ran their heads against the walls.—(Basn., liv. iii. c. 3.)

11 Taled, a sort of square cloak which the Jews wore in the temple to make their prayer; some wound it round their necks, others covered their heads with it; this latter custom was the most general. —(Basn., t. v. liv. vii. c. 17.)

12 Ideo debet mulier potestatem habere supra caput propter angelos. —(1 Ep. S. Pauli ad Corinth, ch. xi. v. 10.)

13 Josephus relates, that when Titus ordered fire to be set to the gates of the second enclosure of the temple, the gold and silver ran down from them like water from a fountain.—(De Bello, c. 23.)

14 This precaution had been taken in order to prevent the pigeons and doves, which were very numerous at Jerusalem, from resting in their flight on the roof of the temple, and defiling it.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 9.

Chapter 4.

The Presentation Part 1.

The Cison proudly rolled its red waters, swelled by the equinoctial storms 1 and the great mountains of Galilee began to be covered with snow, when the parents of Mary began their journey to Jerusalem. We are ignorant of the motive which induced them to leave their native province during the rainy season. Perhaps it was the desire to assist at the great solemnities of the Dedication; perhaps they merely regulated their departure by the epoch of the service of Zachary, whose priestly functions called him to the temple only at regular times. 2

Obliged to make a journey of several days, during the inclement season, with a child quite young, the prudent and pious travellers did not make their way towards the holy city by the wild and rocky road which winds across the arid flats, the foaming torrents, and the deep ravines of the mountains of Samaria: there winter ruled with all his frosts. They descended, by the shrubby slopes of Carmel, into the charming and fertile plains which stretch out between the mountains of Palestine and the coasts of Syria, a land happy and forward, the temperature of which is so mild that the orange-trees blossom there in the heart of winter, and the flowers of May expand in the month of December. 3 After leaving behind them the rich pastures where formerly rose the tents of Issachar, a tribe of shepherd astronomers, 4 whom the burning breath of the Lord's anger had dispersed, like a handful of light straw, even to the wild and mountainous regions of Media;—after having admired, as they passed, the hills covered with palm, banana, and pomegranate-trees, which once formed the smiling inheritance of the sons of Joseph—a fine and warlike race, famous for their skill in shooting with the bow;—the travellers from Galilee went along by the side of the narrow stream of the Gaas, the willows of which love the bank; passed through the groves of Kamatha, a beautiful town, like a cameo fallen into a basket of roses; and reached at length the borders of the ancient territory of the Jebusites. There the aspect of everything was changed: no more flowers, no more verdure, no more odoriferous breeze wafting afar the sweet scent of the lemon-tree; barren rocks, deep ravines where the wind forced its way with lugubrious moanings; abrupt and bare mountains, resounding with the hoarse cries of the eagle: in a word, the grandest, most melancholy, most desolate, and most sterile land that could be seen.

The little caravan had followed, for some time, a stony path tracked along the flat of an arid mountain, when Joachim, stopping on a sudden at an abrupt turn, stretched out his arms towards the south with a movement of religious enthusiasm mixed with national pride. The object which he thus pointed out to the notice of his companions was worth remarking, for nothing more magnificent or more extraordinary existed at that time in Asia. It was a city of thirty-three stadia in circumference, enclosed in stone, like a ruby of Beloutchistan; a town of marble, cedar, and gold, its splendour having something in it sad, wild, and suspicious, which denoted an uneasy authority, permanent fears of some foreign power, and a state of things full of contrasts. There were seen in it enormous towers, magnificent as palaces, and palaces fortified like citadels. Its temple, glittering with gold, which shone brilliantly upon the narrow flat surface of the highest of its mountains, like the orb of the full moon when it skirts the snowy summits of Libanus, 5 was a fortress almost impregnable, which kept the holy people 6 of the Lord in awe; while the tower Antonia, from the top of its four elegant turrets of polished marble, kept an overshadowing and continued watch over the court of the temple. A triple enclosure of walls of enormous stones, in which were encrusted ninety forts, bound the sides of this city, which was surrounded by dark valleys of dizzying depths and rocks inaccessible. This proud and warlike city, which seemed to have been transported by magic from the fabulous regions of Ginnistan, 7 beneath the cloudless sky of Palestine; this paradise of the Jews (Ghangh-dix-houcht), so poetically regretted on the banks of the Euphrates; the city of David and of the Machabees; this Jerusalem, which, in its abject slavery, all the East still salutes with the antique name which the father of Mary then gave it— el Cods! (the Holy.)

The parents of the Virgin entered the capital of Judea by the gate of Rama, upon which fell the shadow of a tower, 8 so high that from its flat top were seen Mount Carmel, the Great Sea, and the Mountains of Arabia. The green standard of Judas Machabeus was still flying there with its religious device; bat the soldiers who surrounded it no longer understood it; for they were Thracians, Galatians, Germans, and the fair children of Gaul, whom Herod, who feared the Jews and depended upon foreigners, took into his pay, and who were detested at Jerusalem almost as much as himself.

The travellers next followed certain winding and gloomy streets, lined with heavy square houses, without windows, with terrace .roofs, which stood in melancholy lines, like citadels; and they stopped in the eastern part of the city before a house of modest appearance, which tradition points out as the dwelling of St. Ann. 9

After a purification of seven days, according to the custom of those who came to sacrifice in the temple, 10 Joachim provided himself with the lamb which he was to offer to the Lord, clothed himself in white, 11 collected together some of the relations and friends whom he had in Jerusalem, and ascended at the head of them to the temple with as much ardour as he would have gone up to the assault of a place in battle.12


1 The Cison is a small river, which runs between Nazareth and Mount Carmel; insignificant and impoverished during tho summer, like all the streams of water of Palestine, it becomes considerable during the rainy season. The troops of Sisara, the general of the army of Jabin, were drowned in this overflowed river in the attempt to force a passage.

2 According to the order established by David, the priests were divided into twenty-four classes, or turns, each of which served its week. Each class was subdivided into seven parts, which had each their week in turn to officiate; each part of this subdivision had that portion of the service which was assigned to him by lot.—(1 Paralip. c. xxiv.) Zachary was of the turn or service of Abia.—(Prid., Hist, of the Jews.)

3 Yolney saw orange-trees bearing fruit and flowers in the open air, in the month of January, on the coasts of Syria. " With us," he says, " nature has divided the seasons by months; there, one may say that they are separated only by hours. If we are annoyed at Tripoli by the heats of July, six hours' march transports us upon the neighbouring mountains to the temperature of March. On the other hand, are we incommoded with the frost of December, in the midst of the mountains, one day's march brings us back to the shore among the flowers of May."

4 St. Jerom assures us that the children of Issachar were the learned men who calculated times, and set down the feasts.—(Hieron., Quæst. in 1 Paralip. 112, p. 1390, et in Genes. 49.) This tradition is conformable to that of the rabbins, who affirm that those of the tribe of Issachar applied themselves assiduously to this knowledge of astronomy. — (Maimon., in Kiddosch. hachodesh, et Zachuth, in Juchasin.) In fine, the Scripture authorises this tradition, since it relates that the children of Issachar were expert in the science of the times, so as to order what Israel should do.—(1 Paralip. xii. 32.)

5 The exterior front of the temple was entirely covered with plates of gold, so thick that as soon as daylight appeared, it was as dazzling as the rays of the rising sun. As for the other sides, where there was no gold, the stones of them were so white, that this superb mass of building looked at a distance like a mountain covered with snow.— (Josephus, de Bello, lib. v. c. 13.)

6 "Extrema rupis abrupta; et turres, ubi mons juvisset, in sexaginta pedes, inter devexa, in centenos vicenoeque attollebantur; mira specie, ac procul intuentibus pares."—(Tacit. Hist. lib. v.)

7 Ginnistan, which the marvellous traditions of the Assyrians and Arabs place at the foot of Mount Caucasus, and on the borders of the Caspian Sea, was the abode of the Peris—a beautiful and fabulous race, which much resembles that of our fairies. These powerful beings, born before the deluge, disposed of the elements, and created everything that could afford them pleasure. Their capital city which they had carefully fortified, to defend it from the attacks of the Dives, who were wicked and formidable genii, was of marble, gold, rubies, and diamonds.

8 The tower Pæphinn.

9 A monastery has been erected over this house of St. Ann; this monastery has been turned into a mosque. Under the Christian kings it was inhabited by religious women.—(See Itin. de Paris a Jerusalem, t. ii. p. 211.)

10 It was not merely necessary to be presented in the temple with the victim: the law required that the person should remain outside for seven full days, and be solemnly purified on the third and seventh day with ashes and hyssop : that done, they might sacrifice.—(Philo, Tract, de Sacrific, c. 3.)

11 According to the rabbins, the sacrifice was of no avail when he who offered it was not clothed in white garments.—(Basn., liv. ix.

12 This was of obligation; the Hebrews were to go up to the temple with as much ardour as a soldier to an assault; they found this pretext in the 55th Psalm, where David said that he went to the house of (iod as to a strong city. (See Basn., Hist, des Juifs, liv. vii. c. 17.)

The Name Of "Mary " — Presentation In The Temple—The Psychology Of The Immaculate — Her First Years In The Temple (About 19-7 B.C.) part 2..

The souls consecrated to God, whether for the service of the altar or for the practice of evangelical virtues, are enraptured at the sight of the Immaculate, advancing joyously and without turning, towards the Sanctuary. Priests, monks, and virgins, love to renew their most holy vows on the day of her Presentation ; they are carried away by her example, they dedicate themselves anew as in the glow of youth, and, in prayer, they beseech her to guard in them to the end, for the service of God, something of the purity and sincerity of her own child-like heart.

The childhood of Mary was, in fact, a model even for the most advanced. The Book of Wisdom speaks of a maturity of intelligence which usually accompanies grey hairs, and of a life without stain, which was like the years of old age. 1 Such was, from her earliest years, the maturity of Mary. Never did any actual fault—it is affirmed by the Church— 2 not even the least of venial failings, render her less pleasing in the sight of God.

This absolute exemption from all personal fault, like the exemption from hereditary stain, was exacted by the divine maternity; and the conception without sin had been a preparation for the whole of an immaculate life. One of the results of original innocence was absolute command of the faculties, the subordination of the passions and senses to the empire of reason. The mind of Mary was, without ceasing, centred upon God, her will was always steadfast in Him by a love, stronger than anything that could attract her among imagined blessings. Finally she was watched over by the ever vigilant Providence of God, and by His mercy always superabundant. So much help from without and within, bestowed upon her a confirmation in absolute grace much more perfect than the partial confirmation accorded to any great saints.

But that happy impossibility of sinning and even of having any inclination towards evil, did not subject her to any determinism, and made no obstacle, but far otherwise, to any of the conditions of merit. Even pain and sorrow were not to be escaped. The only unhappiness unknown to her was the struggle against inward temptation. There remained to her the painful effort of all the sufferings which she embraced or accepted ; privations imposed upon the senses by asceticism, or the fatigue of daily labour while awaiting the sorrows of the soul which God reserved for her. As for liberty, she possessed it as we do ; she possessed it in an even greater degree, for the danger of choosing evil is not of the essence of liberty, but is, on the contrary, an imperfection. 3 Her liberty was so much the more complete, because no error, no ignorance, no disturbance of the senses or passions obscured the judgment of the mind ; in a word, that perfect liberty, which, more like than ours to divine liberty, chose in full light and in full possession of itself whatever good it desired.

Nevertheless, though possessed of graces and incomparable gifts, she was a child, and remained one as long as other children. But as she is, among other things, the epitome of human life, her childishness was much less than that evangelical childishness so esteemed in the kingdom of heaven : the state of man morally adult who voluntarily humbles and abases himself, that he may, in all things, do the good pleasure of his heavenly Father. Subjection, the lower place in all things, continual dependence, the thousand acts of renunciation which almost unconsciously and without merit, others do, or are made to do, she, mistress of her judgment and of her will, accepted with free will.

If she was, joyously and of her free will, thus humbled, 4 it was because she was essentially meek. No one has ever had in the same degree as she, that " very real knowledge of himself, which makes man vile in his own eyes." 5 For, better than any of the greatest ascetics, better in certain respects than the angels of paradise, who in self-forgetfulness sing, " Holy, holy, holy," to Him who dwells alone, she saw the nothingness of every creature ; she felt between herself and God an infinite distance ; and bowing down before His supreme majesty, she ascribed to Him all the homage which she herself had received.

And her habit of looking up to God without ceasing, and of living as if lost in Him, explains her sentiments towards mankind. Not only her love for all, glowing, delicate, and attentive, flowed from her love towards Him, but also, from her humility towards God came her humility before His creatures. Those who, during her early years had authority over her, priests or pious women, represented in her eyes the only Master, and she was docile to their least desires, as signs of the will of heaven.

She was humble even towards her companions. Preferred by God before all His works, she did not esteem herself better than any of the children that surrounded her. How should she dream of exalting herself above them, whoever they might be, when she herself was so profoundly humble before God ? When a poor man feels his poverty so deeply that he has no thought save for his misery, how can it enter into his mind that he is richer than many others ? And because Mary had, more than other people, knowledge of her nothingness, she was of all people the most humble; and because she felt more intensely than others, the innate poverty of the creature, she esteemed herself also the least of all.

The more so that, if she chose to contemplate her own low estate, it pleased her to admire in others the gifts of God ; and, comparing that which in her herself was nothing, with that which was grace and virtue in her companions, she thought more highly of others, and humbled herself in spirit before them.

Assuredly, if she had fully considered in herself and in her neighbour, that which came from the creature and that which came from God, she could not, by an impartial judgment, have declared herself inferior: for in that case it would have been a false judgment, and the perfection of her mind preserved her from all error. But she could, in considering only a part of things, compare the nothingness of her created nature with the gifts which she saw in her companions, and we cannot doubt that she loved to do so. 6 Why should she thus consider, in an imperfect view, the nothingness and not the virtues in herself, and in others the virtues and not the nothingness or defects? There lies the secret itself, the lovely grace, the mysterious perfume of humility. In the words of the Canticles, Mary was the lily, and her companions were the thorns; and the lily had that supreme charm of not esteeming herself above the thorns, and of developing in ignorance of her beauty.

This good and lovely child, developed and grew up during those years, while God and men, but God especially, and almost entirely in everything, educated her in mind and heart.

When her soul, even at the moment of its creation turned towards God, her first thought was miraculously independent of her organism. Much was thus taught her, and it is probable that this marvellous method of intellectual operations was never withdrawn from her. Though this is but a fleeting gift among those contemplative people who receive the favour, with her it remained permanently. God had given her from the beginning a certain amount of knowledge, placed by Himself in her mind; and, during the course of her childhood and her life, He augmented, when He so willed, that treasure of enlightenment, which formed the "intuitive knowledge " of Mary. However, when her faculties began to act, and commenced to transmit to the brain the impressions from outside, a new mode of acquiring knowledge was added to the first, the mode used by us, following which the organic faculties presented to the mind the matter from which, by abstraction, they had drawn their ideas. After, and at the same time as the " intuitive knowledge," came the "acquired knowledge," which continued and harmoniously completed it.

In this class of acquired knowledge, Mary's childish intelligence had a normal and natural development. In many cases, it is true, she learned by the ordinary methods of human knowledge that which God had already otherwise shown her; and her progress consisted not in knowing other things, but in knowing them in a different way. But at other times she acquired in this way knowledge that was really new.

For God had not revealed all to His privileged one. She had never been really ignorant, with that ignorance of things that ought to be known, which is a humiliating imperfection; but she had to begin with the incomplete knowledge which is progressive, and which at the most suitable time gathers to itself fresh intellectual treasures. Further, God usually reveals things rather than words, and intelligible realities rather than material objects. Mary was therefore able to possess the spiritual doctrine of the Scriptures before knowing the details of the text, or the forms of the twenty-two graphic signs, or the differences between biblical Hebrew and the language as it was commonly spoken, or the melody used in chanting the psalms. And yet she could have abundant enlightenment upon the things of the created world, which enabled her to praise the Creator acceptably, even though she did not possess the art of mingling the threads of linen and gold in embroidery, or of executing other work after the manner of the women of her time and country.

She could therefore learn in the Temple, and in a certain degree, she could be taught. It is true, nevertheless, that she owed as little as possible to her teachers. Her intelligence was perfect; and that which she knew by Divine revelation gave her powerful aid in the acquisition of fresh knowledge. Under such conditions she must have learned, not only with an incredible rapidity, but, when scarcely placed upon the road, she must have outstripped those who had the duty of instructing her. Everything indicates, however, that she hid her progress as much as was possible, and made herself appear to advance at the same rate as her companions.

She progressed above all by personal study, reflection, the comparison of things that she already knew, and always by the unceasing aid of the Divine light. The wise men of the Old Testament were obliged to meditate without ceasing upon the Law and upon the Word of God ; and such was the constant occupation of Mary. She increased in the knowledge of God, of His works, of His providence, of His designs of love upon our hearts, upon Israel, and upon mankind; she penetrated into the meaning of the commandments, especially into the greatest of all, that of charity; she entered, even further than David himself, into the sentiments of the sacred songs; she followed, in the history of the Hebrew people and in the prophets, the progressive preparation for the kingdom of God. And, under the enigmas of the prophecies, and the veil of the symbols, it was always the Messiah that she saw; without knowing yet the details of His life and work, and quite ignorant of the part which she herself would take in it, but knowing the God incarnate who would bring light to men and save them by His humiliation, loving Him beforehand, and knowing that, in Scripture, in the world, and in history, everything related to Him.

Filled with these thoughts, the Virgin poured out her heart in songs of praise and fervent supplication. 7 She prayed for herself. For it is a universal law that if God of His goodness anticipates the prayer, it is His desire that prayer should obtain the graces which follow, and the increase of holiness. Inasmuch as He had called Mary to a pre-eminent holiness, He would make her pray to Him as human creature had never prayed before, and it would please Him to hear her beseech Him day and night that she might advance in His love. She prayed for all the world, asking God to hasten the hour of His salvation, and perhaps, in her humility, offering to be the humble servant of the Virgin who should one day give birth to the Messiah.

When Mary, before the altar of the old covenant, thus poured forth her praises and her prayers, she was not only one of the members of the human family, but the holiest of all and the most pleasing to God. She already represented the whole of that family. For it is her part to be at the same time maternal, royal, and sacerdotal, to carry within herself, and to symbolise, while surpassing it, all the faithful portion of humanity. Soon, in receiving the Christ, she would conceive with Him all the regenerated who are His members. Now, during the days of her childhood, she is the type of the first age of the human race, and of all the just under the ancient Law. She reunites in herself, she brings to perfection, and she presents to God all the worship, praises, and desires of that Church of waiting and preparation. Whilst, quite near her, the Levitical priest sacrifices and burns the flesh of victims which are worthless in themselves, she animates the ancient worship by the fervency of her spirit and her prayer; she offers to God the sacrifice which pleases Him, that of praise coming from pure lips and a spotless heart; and realising the insufficiency of the ceremonies of the law, and even of prayer itself, if it does not rise to Heaven through the only Mediator of man, she vivifies all the worship of the old world by faith in the Messiah, whose unique sacrifice will for ever bring peace to earth and heaven.

The transports of Mary's heart were more pleasing to God than the burnt sacrifices of the patriarchs and of the sons of Aaron ; they hastened the day of mercy, and of the new covenant. The ark of the old covenant was never placed in the sanctuary built on the return from the exile, and yet at that day, thanks to the humble child who prayed in its precincts, the new Temple was more glorious than the old; the symbol had already given place to the reality; it possessed the true Ark, upon which, more fully than in the days of Moses and Solomon, rested the majesty of God.

1 Book of Wisdom iv. 8, 9.

2 Council of Trent, session vi., canon 23.

3 As a created being her liberty was not intrinsically incapable of faltering; but the help to which reference has been made, rendered all failure a complete moral impossibility.

4 Saint Francis de Sales, Sermon for the feast of Saint Nicolas of Tolentino (10 September) ; ed. d'Annecy, vol. ix. 349. This sermon and the three sermons upon the Presentation of the Holy Virgin (in the same volume) abound in charming touches concerning the evangelical infancy and the psychology of the child Mary.

5 Saint Bernard : de gradibus hitinililatis, near the beginning (PL. clxxxii. 942).

6 Cf. St Thomas, 2ª 2ӕ, q. clxi., a 3. The whole of this article should be seen, for besides the theory of humility here set forth, it contains certain reservations which should also be taken into account.

7 The revelations of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, concerning the prayers which the Virgin made in the Temple, are well known. See Montalembert. M. Horn, the recent historian of the Saint, refers to Montalembert himself, and while adding scarcely anything quotes him in part. The revelation upon the prayers of Mary is referred to in the thirteenth century in the Meditations upon the life of Christ, chap. iii. Except for one or two details which might present some difficulty, it is an admirable work. There are many fine passages also, in particular those relating to the meditations of Mary upon the ancient priesthood and the expected Messiah, in the Vie intérieure de la Sainte Vierge, edited from the notes of M. Olier.

From SAINT MARY THE VIRGIN BY RENE-MARIE DE LA BROISE
TRANSLATED BY HAROLD GIDNEY