Main and cross-cutting keywords 🌟

• Anne of Bethlehem
• The Virgin Mary

A pilgrim brings blessings with him.

• Pilgrim
• Words of wisdom

Believe Me, man: you will find good and bad everywhere.

• Good and evil
• Words of wisdom

«Let us go. But I shall have to pour six jars of water on the vegetables which have just come up.»

«And I will help you.»

«No, You are a gentleman, Your behaviour says so.»

«I am a worker, woman. This one is a fisherman. Those two Judaeans are well off and employed. I am not.»

• Jesus Christ
• Who is Jesus? How Christ defines himself

I am not a gentleman Myself. I am a carpenter.

• Jesus Christ
• Who is Jesus? How Christ defines himself

In all sincerity, I must admit that we were all drunk, even I, then an adolescent, also my wife, then only a few years old… because we all believed them, and in a poor Galilean woman we saw the Virgin Mother mentioned by the Prophets. But She was with Her husband, a rough Galilean! If She was the wife, how could She be the “Virgin”? To cut a long story short: we believed. Gifts, worshipping… houses opened to give them hospitality!…

Oh! They played their roles very well! Poor Anne! She lost her property and her life, and also the children of her oldest daughter, the only one left because she was married to a merchant in Jerusalem, lost all their property because their house was burned down and the whole holding was laid waste by Herod’s order. Now it is an uncultivated field where herds feed.

• Anne of Bethlehem
• The Virgin Mary

The precept of love forbids cursing. One curse attracts another curse.

• Curse
• Words of wisdom

«(...) Could it not be true that the shepherds and the sorcerers spoke the truth, revealed to them by God? Why do you carry on believing they were liars?»

«Because the years of the prophecy were not complete. We thought about it afterwards… after our eyes had been opened by the blood that reddened basins and rivulets.»

«And could the Most High not have advanced the coming of the Saviour, out of an excess of love for His people? On what did the sorcerers found their statement? You told Me they came from the East…»

«On their calculations concerning a new star.»

«Is it not written: “A star from Jacob takes the leadership, a sceptre arises from Israel”? Is Jacob not the great Patriarch and did he not stop in the land of Bethlehem as dear to him as his eyes, because his beloved Rachel died there? And did the mouth of a Prophet not say: “A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots”? Jesse, David’s father, was born here. Is the shoot on the stock, cut at its roots by tyrannical usurpation, is it not the “Virgin” Who will give birth to Her Son, conceived not by deed of man, otherwise She would not be a virgin, but by divine will, whereby He will be the “Emmanuel” because: Son of God, He will be God and bring God among the people of God, as His name proclaims? And will He not be announced, as the prophecy says, to the people walking in darkness, that is to the pagans, “by a great light”? And the star the Magi saw, could it not be the star of Jacob, the great light of the two prophecies of Balaam and Isaiah? And the very massacre ordered by Herod, does it not come within the prophecies? “A voice is heard in Ramah… It is Rachel weeping for her children”. It was written that tears should ooze from Rachel’s bones in her sepulchre at Ephrathah when, through the Saviour, the reward would come to the holy people. Tears which were to turn into celestial laughter, just as the rainbow is formed by the last drops of the storm, but it says: “Here, the sky is clear again”»

«You are a learned man. Are You a rabbi?»

«Yes, I am.»

«And I perceived it. There is light and truth in Your words. But… Oh! too many wounds are still bleeding in this land of Bethlehem because of the true or false Messiah… I would never advise Him to come here. The land would reject Him as it rejects a stepson who caused the death of the true children. In any case… if it was Him… He died with the other slaughtered children.»

• Jesus Christ preaches in Bethlehem
• Preaching of Jesus Christ
• Star of Bethlehem (Epiphany)

And did the mouth of a Prophet not say: “A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots”? Jesse, David’s father, was born here. Is the shoot on the stock, cut at its roots by tyrannical usurpation, is it not the “Virgin” Who will give birth to Her Son, conceived not by deed of man, otherwise She would not be a virgin, but by divine will, whereby He will be the “Emmanuel” because: Son of God, He will be God and bring God among the people of God, as His name proclaims?

• Incarnation
• Jesus Christ - God-Man
• Jesus Christ - Son of God
• The Virgin Mary
• Virginity of the Virgin Mary

«And yet… My friends, here the night of the twenty-fifth of Chislev, Feast of the Lights, Jesus Christ, was born of the Virgin, the Emmanuel, the Word of God made flesh, for the love of man: I Who am speaking to you . Also then, as now, the world was deaf to the voices of Heaven speaking to the hearts of men… and it rejected the Mother… and here… No, Judas, do not avert your eyes in disgust from those fluttering noctules, from those green lizards, from those cobwebs, do not lift with disgust your beautiful embroidered mantle, lest it may trail on the ground covered with animal excrement. Those noctules are the daughters’ daughters of the ones that were the first toys to be tossed before the eyes of the Child, for Whom the angels sang the “Gloria” heard by the shepherds, intoxicated only by an ecstatic joy, a true joy. The emerald green of those lizards was the first colour to strike My eyes, the first, after My Mother’s white face and dress. Those cobwebs were the canopy of My royal cradle. This ground… oh! you may tread on it without disdain… It is littered with excrement… but it is sanctified by Her foot, the foot of the Holy, the Most Holy, Pure, Immaculate Mother of God, Who gave birth, because She was to give birth, because God, not man, told Her and covered Her with His shadow. She, the Faultless One, trod on it. You can tread on it, too. And may the purity diffused by Her, by the will of God, rise from the soles of your feet to your heart…»

• Immaculate Conception
• Incarnation
• Jesus Christ - Word of God
• The Virgin Mary
• The Virgin Mary - Mother of God
• Virginity of the Virgin Mary