Revelations of St. Bridget/Chapter 11. The Life of Jesus before his Passion
CHAPTER XI.
THE LIFE OF JESUS BEFORE HIS PASSION.
Mary speaketh: I have spoken to thee of my dolors; but that dolor was not the least which I experienced, when I bore my Son in my flight to Egypt, and when I heard the innocents slaughtered, and Herod pursuing my Son. But, although I knew what was written of my Son, yet my heart, for the excessive love I bore my Son, was filled with grief and sadness. You may perhaps ask what my Son did all that time of his life before his Passion. I reply, that, as the Gospel says, he was subject to his parents, and he acted like other children, till he reached his majority. Nor were wonders wanting in his youth: how idols were silenced, and fell in numbers in Egypt at his coming; how the Wise Men foretold that my Son should be a sign of great things to come; how, too, the ministries of angels appeared; how, too, no uncleanness appeared upon him, nor entanglement in his hair, all which it is unnecessary for thee to know, as signs of his divinity and humanity are set forth in the Gospel, which may edify thee and others. But when he came to more advanced years, he was in constant prayer, and obediently went up with us to Jerusalem and elsewhere, to the appointed feasts; so wonderful then were his sight and words, and so acceptable, that many in affliction, said: w Let us go to Mary’s Son, by whom we may' be consoled.” But increasing in age and wisdom, wherewith he was replete from the first, he labored with his hands, in such things as were becoming, and spoke to us separately words of consolation and divinity, so that we were continually filled with unspeakable joy. But when we were in fear, poverty, and difficulty, he did not make for us gold and silver, but exhorted us to patience, and we were wonderfully preserved from the envious. Necessaries were occasionally furnished to us by the compassion of pious souls, sometimes from our own labor, so that we had what was necessary for our actual support, but not for superfluity, for we only sought to serve God. After this, he conversed familiarly with friends who came to the house, on the law, and its meanings and figures; he also openly disputed with the learned, so that they wondered, saying: “ Ho ! Joseph’s Son teaches the masters, some great spirit speaketh in him.” Once as I was thinking of his Passion, seeing my sadness, he said: “ Dost thou not believe, mother, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me ? Wast thou sullied when I entered thee, or in pain when I came forth ? Why art thou contracted by sadness ? For it is the will of my Father, that I suffer death; nay, my will with the Father. What I have of the Father cannot suffer; but the flesh which I took of thee shall suffer, that the flesh of others may be redeemed, and their spirits saved.” He was so obedient, that when Joseph by chance said: Do this or that, he immediately did it, because he so concealed the power of his divinity, that it could not be discerned except by me, and sometimes by Joseph, who both often saw an admirable light poured around him, and heard angelic voices singing over him. We also saw that unclean spirits, which could not be expelled by tried exoroists in our law, departed at the sight of my Son’s presence.