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would show up and repay the visit of her young cousin? Most probably she would bring Zacharias and her baby boy. How much rejoicing there would be among the two families!
    We don’t know anything about the parents of Mary, but tradition has it that their names were Joachim and Anna. Down to the earliest times of Christianity, artists have pictured Anna as a happy grandmother with her daughter Mary and her little grandson. Couldn’t it be that some people from Nazareth returning from the census in Bethlehem brought the message to Anna that the baby had arrived, and her daughter and son-in-law would wait those 40 days near Jerusalem? What would any mother in our day think and do in such a case? She would exclaim: “Oh, my poor girl! She only took the most necessary things for emergency with her. I must get her everything she could possibly need.” And then the elderly woman might start out on the trip herself, impatient to see the precious grandchild.
    Sure, this is all “might be” and “maybe,” but if I want to bring those 40 days of waiting to life, I certainly must use all my God-given faculties: the intellect and the memory for studying, and imagination, to be applied lovingly to reading between the lines. Consider what a part imagination plays in public life, in the world of fiction writing, movies, radio, and television! It couldn’t possibly be put to better use than to help us to perceive how He did what He did, or what He looked like when He said certain things. It seems as if only the painters have made use of this privilege “to figure it all out.” When we think of the “annunciations,” the “visitations,” and the “nativities” as they were imagined by painters and sculptors throughout the centuries, it should serve as a stimulus to our imagination. “All right, that’s the way Giotto or Raphael, Michelangelo or Albrecht Durer saw it. Which way would you and I picture it?” And isn’t it a shame that you and I would most probably have to admit that we hadn’t gotten around yet to thinking about it, and just took Raphael and Fra Angelico and their pitiful descendants from Barclay Street and St. Sulpice as substitutes?
    It is said that in the fourth century the market women in Constantinople were throwing cabbage heads at each other because they had different opinions about the Most Holy Trinity. Isn’t it rather sad that we have to admit that while market women might still throw cabbage heads at each other, the reasons for doing so have changed so completely! Who cares now, for instance, what happened to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph while they were waiting for the days of her purification to be fulfilled?
    Finally the morning of the great feast day dawned. Mary and Joseph must have set out with the child very early that morning to be in time for the morning sacrifice in the temple, after which the mothers used to be purified.
    They were nearing her second home now — the temple. Tradition tells us that Mary had been brought to the house of God when she was three years old. As a temple virgin she spent her whole youth within the holy walls of the cloister together with other young girls from the first families. It was the highest education a young woman in Israel could get. They were taught how to read and write. If we consider that all boys had to learn to read (only the boys, not the girls), but not how to write, we understand what a privilege it was to be a temple virgin. They were instructed in Holy Scriptures, some of which, like the Psalms and the Proverbs, they had to learn by heart. They were taught how to cook and took turns cooking for the priests. They learned how to spin and weave and embroider. Is it any wonder that they were the most sought-after brides in Israel? The temple, besides being the house of the Most High, was for Mary also her home, her alma mater. The fondest memories of her youth were connected with it. Only a year or two had she been away from this sacred place, but