«Come. Let us go to the Grotto. It is useless to enter the town. The best friends of My Child are no longer there. Friendly Nature is quite sufficient to make a fire, with its stones, its stream, its wood. Nature perceived the coming of its Lord… There… come without hesitating… We go round here… There, over there are the ruins of David’s Tower. Oh! it is dearer to Me than a royal palace! Blessed ruins! Blessed stream! Blessed tree because, as if by miracle, you allowed the wind to pull down so many of your branches so that we might find firewood and light a fire!»
Mary descends quickly towards the Grotto, She crosses the little stream on a board acting as a bridge, She runs in the open space before the ruins and falls on Her knees at the entrance of the Grotto, She bends and kisses the ground. All the others follow Her. They are touched… The boy, who has not left Her one moment, seems to be listening to a wonderful story and his little dark eyes drink in Mary’s words and gestures without missing a single one.
Mary stands up and goes in saying: «Everything is exactly as then!… But then it was night… Joseph lit a lamp when I entered. Only then, dismounting from the little donkey I realised how tired and cold I was… An ox greeted us, I went near it, to feel its warmth and lean against the hay… Joseph laid the hay out here, where I am, to make a bed for Me, and he dried the hay for Me and for You, Son, at the fire he had lit in that corner… because he was as good as a father in his love of an angelical spouse… And holding each other’s hand, like brother and sister lost in the darkness of night, we ate our bread and cheese, then he went over there to kindle the fire and he took off his mantle to close the entrance… In actual fact he put a veil before the glory of God descending from Heaven. You, My Jesus… and I lay on the hay, in the warmth of the two animals, wrapped in My mantle and covered with a woollen blanket… My dear spouse!… In that hour of anxiety when I was all alone before the mystery of My first maternity, an hour full of uncertainty for every woman, and in My case, in My only maternity, it was also full of the mystery of what it would be to see the Son of God emerge from mortal flesh, he, Joseph, was like a mother, an angel to Me… he was My comfort then and always afterwards…
207.6
Then silence and sleep wrapped the Just man… so that he might not see what for Me was God’s daily kiss…
And with regards to Me, after the interval of human necessities, there came immeasurable waves of ecstasy from a heavenly sea and they raised Me higher and higher on their bright crests carrying Me up with them into an ocean of light, of joy, of peace, of love, until I was lost in the sea of God, of God’s bosom… A voice from the earth whispered: “Are You sleeping, Mary?”. Oh! it was so far away!… An echo, a remembrance of the earth!… And so faint it was that My soul did not stir, and I do not know how I replied, while I rose, I rose even higher into the depth of fire, of infinite beatitude of foreknowledge of God… up to Him… Oh! were You born of Me that night, or was I born of the Triune brightness? Did I give You or did You absorb Me to generate Me? I do not know… And then the descent, from choir to choir, from star to star, from cloud to cloud, a sweet, slow, blissful, placid descent, like a flower carried high in the sky by an eagle and then dropped, descending slowly, on the wings of the air, made more beautiful by a drop of rain, by a tiny piece of rainbow stolen in the sky… alights on its native soil… My diadem: You! You on My heart…
Sitting here, after adoring You on My knees, I loved You. At last I could love You without the barrier of the flesh, and I moved from here to take You to the love of him, who, like Me, was worthy of being one of the first to love You. And here, between these two rustic columns, I offered You to the Father. And here You rested for the first time on Joseph’s heart… Then I swaddled You and together we laid You here… And I lulled You while Joseph was drying hay at the fire and when it was warm he placed it on Your chest and then we both adored You, bending over You, as I am doing now, to inhale Your breath, contemplating the humiliation to which love can lead and shedding tears which are certainly shed also in Heaven for the unexhausted joy of seeing God.»
207.7
Mary, Who has been pacing to and fro while recalling the past, pointing out the places, panting with love, with bright tears shining in Her blue eyes and a smile of joy on Her lips, bends over Her Jesus, Who is sitting on a huge stone listening to Her recollection, and kisses His head, weeping, adoring as She did then…
«And then the shepherds… they were in here, adoring with their good souls and with the deep sigh of the earth which entered with them, with their scent of humanity, of herds and hay; and outside there were the angels, everywhere, who adored with their love, with their songs which no human creature can repeat, and with the love of Heaven, with the air of Heaven which came in with them, which they brought in, in all their brightness… Your birth, Blessed Son!…»
Mary has knelt down beside Her Son and weeps emotionally with Her head resting on His knees. No one dare speak for some time. More or less moved they all look around as if they expected to see the scene painted among the cobwebs and rough stones…
Mary collects Herself and says: «Now, I told you of the infinitely simple and infinitely great birth of My Son. With My woman’s heart, not with the wisdom of a master. There is nothing else, because it was the greatest thing on the earth, concealed under very ordinary appearances.»