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Less than an hour’s walk from Nazareth a clear, cold spring seeped through a precipitous embankment and formed a small pool. Surrounded by trees that gave shade; moss, fern and lilies flourished. In evening hours, familiar and incessant sounds of small creatures announced the creeping softness of approaching silence. Here, morning wetness and gentle mists greeted opening dawn. Here sunlight danced in innumerable droplets of condensation. Here in the afternoons, she came.
* * *
This was Mary’s place; a solitary place where she came when she felt the need for quiet meditation, for closeness with God. Here in late afternoon, she smiled at bright butterflies bouncing in puffs of gentle summer zephyrs. A small beauty with blue streaks in butter-yellow wings lighted upon her hand as if stopping to gossip. Captivated, she watched as it sat between her thumb and forefinger, slowly moving its wings to some silent rhythm. Nature often accommodates the delight of those who hold her in awe. And here, in early morning or evening vesper hours she came to pray. This place, hidden in the hills, her private sanctuary.
* * *
Still lights twinkling in the valley plain and in the deepening vault above. Sweet Jasmine smells. The urgency of parental concern flitted about her consciousness tugging at her thoughts, at her compulsive desire to stay in this place. “Oh God,” her heart exclaimed, “Let me live here forever.” She did not expect an answer, but one came.
“Mary.”
* * *
The man simply appeared. He had not approached by foot. She had heard no one coming and surely she would have. He appeared there as if he had preceded her, waiting for her. But she had not seen him, or heard him. She was afraid. She wanted to flee but her legs would not move. He made no attempt to touch her, he just stood there, looking at her as if . . . as if it were she and not he, who had suddenly and mysteriously appeared, as if it were she who were the apparition to be feared, as if she, not he, were the subject of awe.
What beautiful eyes; Mary thought without fear. He spoke, “Be comforted, child.” He appeared to be about ten years her senior. Not a man of ancient years, although he was. Not a man of maturity and command, although he was that, too. He bore no semblance of opulence, no airs, no attitude of elite superiority. He was simply a man, unspectacular, unassuming. Intuitively, Mary knew this was no ordinary man. “God has chosen you above all women, Mary,” he said quietly. He waited as the soft sound of the brook splashed and rippled. It was an appropriate sound, making itself heard with poignant moment. “In this you are highly honored. You are favored as no other.” The magnitude of this simple declaration did not register for the child.
“I . . . I do not understand,” she stammered. “Who are you?” Even more important, her heart inquired, What are you? Unanswered, his eyes danced with the twilight. He smiled. Whatever anxiety may have stalked her, retreated, replaced with expectancy. Why have you come? A question of thought, reluctant to make it way to her tongue.
Sensing her expectancy he said, “I have splendid news for you, child.” He spoke to her as a father, yet he was not. He waited. He wanted her to hunger, to seek, to demand what he had to say. It did not take long.
In the pressing necessity of her heart, she begged, peremptorily: Please!
* * *
He had thought of a thousand ways in which what he had to say could be said. He wanted to announce it to the sound of trumpets and the race of stars across the heavens. He wanted to make an event of it. These urgings stirred powerfully in his heart but in the end he stated simply, “You are to bear a child.” Mary’s heart stopped. Questions, unformed, unintelligible, bubbled in her mind. “A son. You will call his name, Jesus!” She had been standing but at this, she dropped to her knees and then sat on the grass. She was confused, undone and terrified. It was not his appearance, nor the tone of his voice that unsettled her, but the import in his speech. Weakly, she stammered,
“I . . . cannot . . .”
“Mary,” he continued, each syllable in sweet velvet, “Your son will be very great. He will be the Son of the Most High God.” And then the man appeared to succumb to transcendent ecstasy and uttered words that seemed to her as lyrics of a song, soaring beyond her comprehension,
“And the Lord God
will give to him
the throne of his father, David.
He will reign
over the house of Jacob forever
and of his kingdom
there shall be no end!”
It was then that Mary realized that this man is something other than a man. An intimation? A subtle emanation? A verisimilitude of superhuman life? However construed, it caused her to cry out within herself, “He is an angel of God!”
* * *
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