Chapter 3.
Now, when he had been there for some time, on a
certain day when he was alone, an angel of the Lord stood by him in a
great light. And when he was disturbed at his appearance, the
angel who had appeared to him restrained his fear, saying: Fear
not, Joachim, nor be disturbed by my appearance; for I am the angel of
the Lord, sent by Him to thee to tell thee that thy prayers have been
heard, and that thy charitable deeds have gone up into His
presence.1694
For He
hath seen thy
shame, and hath heard the
reproach of unfruitfulness
which has been unjustly brought against thee. For
God is the
avenger of
sin, not of
nature: and, therefore, when He shuts up
the
womb of any one, He does so that He may miraculously open it again;
so that that which is
born may be acknowledged to be not of
lust, but
of the
gift of
God. For was it not the case that the first mother
of your
nation—
Sarah—was
barren up to her eightieth
year?
1695
And, nevertheless, in extreme old
age she brought forth
Isaac, to whom the
promise was
renewed of the
blessing of all
nations.
Rachel also, so favoured of the
Lord,
and so
beloved by holy
Jacob, was long
barren; and yet she brought
forth
Joseph, who was not only the
lord of Egypt, but the deliverer of
many
nations who were ready to
perish of
hunger. Who among the
judges was either stronger than
Samson, or more holy than Samuel?
And yet the mothers of both were
barren. If, therefore, the
reasonableness of my words does not
persuade thee, believe in fact that
conceptions very late in
life, and births in the case of
women that
have been
barren, are usually attended with something wonderful.
Accordingly thy
wife Anna will bring forth a
daughter to thee, and thou
shalt call her name
Mary: she shall be, as you have vowed,
consecrated to the
Lord from her infancy, and she shall be filled with the
Holy Spirit, even
from her mother’s
womb. She shall neither eat nor drink any
unclean thing, nor shall she spend her
life among the
crowds of the
people without, but in the
temple of the
Lord, that it may not be
possible either to say, or so much as to suspect, any
evil concerning
her. Therefore, when she has grown up, just as she herself shall
be miraculously
born of a
barren woman, so in an incomparable manner
she, a
virgin, shall bring forth the Son of the Most High, who shall be
called
Jesus, and who, according to the etymology of His name, shall be
the Saviour of all
nations. And this shall be the sign to thee of
those things which I
announce: When thou shalt come to the Golden
gate in Jerusalem, thou shalt there meet Anna thy wife, who, lately
anxious from the delay of thy return, will then rejoice at the sight of
thee. Having thus spoken, the angel departed from
him.
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