O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
       Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,
       Term by eternal council fixed upon,
     Thou art she who didst ennoble man,
       That even He who had created him
       To be Himself His creature disdained not. 
     Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
       By virtue of whose heat this flower thus
       Is blossoming in the eternal peace. 
     Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch
       Of charity, and among mortal men
       Below, thou art a living fount of hope. 
     Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,
       That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,
       Would have his wish fly upward without wings. 
     Thy loving-kindness succors not alone
       Him who is seeking it, but many times
       Freely anticipates the very prayer. 
     In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,
       In thee magnificence, whatever good
       Is in created being joins in thee.

Dante, Par.  XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans.  H. Johnson.)

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

MARY OF NAZARETH

     Mary, of whom was born Jesus.

     S. Matt.  I. 16.

My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate, coming forth from thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath delivered Adam from the primal curse; wherefore, to thee, Immaculate, the Mother of God and Virgin in very sooth, we cry aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel, “Hail, O Lady, protection and shelter and salvation of our souls!”

BYZANTINE.

The silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked speculation as to what is left untold.  The devout imagination has played about the hints we receive and woven them into stories which far outrun any true implication of the facts.  Thus has much legendary matter gathered about the childhood of our Lord, containing the stories, not always very edifying according to our taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal Gospels.  The same eagerness to know more than we are told has produced the developed legend of the childhood of our Lady.  We can of course place no reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps the most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary’s father was Joachim and her mother Anna.  The rest may be left to silence.

But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot be hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God’s plan for her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord.  There are certain inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and which the theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they thought of her function in relation to the Incarnation.  We know that the work of Redemption by which it was God’s purpose to lead back a sinful world to Himself was a purpose that