Mother of God—­oh, rare prerogative;
     Oh, glorious title—­what more special grace
     Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give
     To show how far thou dost all creatures pass? 
     That mighty power within the narrow fold
     Did of thy ne’er polluted womb remain,
     Whom, whiles he doth th’ all-ruling Sceptre hold,
     Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;
     Thou in the springtide of thy age brought’st forth
     Him who before all matter, time and place,
     Begotten of th’ Eternal Father was. 
     Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth
     A means unto that Son not to proceed
     In rigour with us for each sinful deed.

     John Brereley, Priest (Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.) 1575-1643

PART TWO

CHAPTER XI

NAZARETH

     And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
     subject unto them.

     S. Luke II, 51.

The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure Virgin Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us the bread of immortality and the wine of consolation.  Give blessings then in spiritual song.

     ARMENIAN.

After the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are etched for us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a space of about twelve years of which we are told nothing.  The fables which fill the pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly to emphasise the difference between an inspired and an uninspired narrative.  The human imagination trying to develop the situation suggested by the Gospel and to fill in the unwritten chapters of our Lord’s life betrays its incompetence to create a story of God Incarnate which shall have the slightest convincing power.  These Apocryphal stories are immensely valuable to us as, by contrast, creating confidence in the story of Jesus as told by the Evangelists, but for nothing more.

We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years of silence in our Lord’s training; and we shall best use it, not by trying to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to understand what is necessarily involved in the facts as we know them.  We know that the home in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph brought Jesus after the death of Herod permitted them to return from Egypt was the simple home of a carpenter.  It would appear to have been shared by the children of Joseph, and our Lady would have been the house-mother, busy with many cares.  We know, too, that under this commonplace exterior of a poor household there was a life of the spirit of far reaching significance.  Mary was ceaselessly pondering many things—­the significance of all those happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they were quite purposeless.  Of course this could not have been a settled feeling, for the insight of her pure soul would have held her to the certainty that such actions of God as she had experienced would some day reveal the meaning which as yet lay hidden.