Jesus is with Peter, Andrew and John. He knocks at the door of the house in Nazareth. His Mother opens immediately. Her face, on seeing her Jesus, lights up with a bright smile.
-You are coming back at an opportune moment, my Son. Since yesterday I have had with me a pure dove who is waiting for you. She came from far away. The person who accompanied her could not stay any longer. Since she asked for advice, I said what I could, but only You, my Son, are Wisdom. Welcome back, you too. Come in immediately to rest and regain your strength.
-Yes, stay here; I am going without delay with this creature who is waiting for me.
Peter, as if he hoped to be able to see through the walls, observes with the corner of his eye in all directions; John seems as if he wanted to read in the smiling face of Mary the name of the stranger; Andrew, who is intensely blushing, looks at Jesus with all the strength of his pupils and a mute supplication trembles in his eyes and on his lips.
But Jesus does not stop his attention on any of them. While the three disciples decide to enter the kitchen, where Mary offers them food and the warmth of the fire, Jesus lifts the curtain that covers the door leading to the garden and goes out.
A delicate sun gives the fully flowered branches of the tall almond tree in the orchard a fluffier and more unreal appearance than they already have; It is the only flowering tree, the tallest of the trees in the orchard, plentiful with its pinkish-white silk dress among the naked poverty of the others (pear, apple, fig, vine, pomegranate), barren and naked; pompous with its sparkling and lively veil that contrasts with the gray monotonous humility of the olive trees. ... it seems as if it had trapped with its long branches a very tenuous cloud lost in the bramble field of the sky, and with its vedijas it had adorned itself to say to all: "Spring is coming, the time of betrothal. Exult, plants and animals. It is the time for kisses with the wind or the bees, oh flowers; it is the time for kisses under the tiles or among the dense vegetation, oh little birds of God, oh candid sheep: today kisses, tomorrow offspring, to perpetuate the work of the Creator, our God!
Jesus, erect under the sun, with his hands folded on his breast, smiles at the pure and serene grace of his mother's garden, with its squares planted with lilies already showing their first bundles of leaves, with its rose bushes still bare and the olive tree so silver, with other families of flowers scattered among the humble squares of vegetables and sprouting vegetables; pure, orderly, delicate, he too seems to exhale the candor of perfect virginity.
-Son, come to my room. I'll bring her to you, because when she heard so many voices she fled to that end.
Jesus enters the mother's room, that chaste, most chaste little room that heard the words of the angelic colloquy and that emanates, even more than the orchard, the virginal, angelic, holy essence of the Woman who has been dwelling in it for years and of the Archangel who venerated his Queen in it. Has thirty years already passed or did the meeting take place yesterday? Today, too, one sees a distaff with its soft, almost argentine flake of worsted, and on the spindle thread, and, above the shelf by the door, a folded embroidery, between a scroll of parchment and a copper vase with a bushy sprig of almond blossom; today too
The striped curtain, the one that shrouds the mystery of this virginal abode, is still palpitating with a light breeze; the bed, tidy, in its corner, still has that delicate aspect proper to a girl who has barely reached the threshold of youth. What dreams will and will have been produced on that pillow of scanty thickness!....
Mary's hand slowly lifts the curtain. Jesus, who, standing with his back to the door, was contemplating that nest of purity, turns around.
-She is a lamb, and You are her Shepherd," and, having said this, Mary - who had entered, holding the hand of a slender, dark-haired girl, who, seeing herself in the presence of Jesus, blushes intensely - gently withdraws, letting the curtain fall.
-Peace to you, child.
-Peace... Lord...
The young girl, very moved, can no longer speak, and kneels down on her face to the ground.
-Get up. What do you want from me? Don't be afraid...
-It's not fear... but... now, in front of you, after I've wanted so much... everything I saw easy and necessary to tell you... I can't find the words anymore...
to tell you... the words don't come to me anymore... it doesn't seem that way anymore... I am a fool... Forgive me, my Lord...
-Are you asking for grace for this world? Do you need a miracle? Do you have to convert a soul? No? So? Courage, speak! As much courage as you have had and now you lack it? Don't you know that I am the one who increases strength?
Do you? Do you know it? Well then, come on, speak, as if I were a father to you! I see that you are young. How old are you? -Sixteen, my Lord.
- Where do you come from? -From Jerusalem.
-What is your name? -Annalia...
-The beloved name of my grandmother and of many other holy women of Israel, and, forming one with it, that of the good, faithful, loving and gentle wife of Jacob. It will bring you good omens. You will be an exemplary wife and mother, won't you? Are you shaking your head? Are you weeping? Have you been rejected? Is that not it either? Has your betrothed died? Have you not been chosen yet?
The young girl continues shaking her head in denial. Jesus takes a step towards her, caresses her and forces her to raise her head and to look at him.... The smile of Jesus overcomes the girl's state of confusion, who now feels more confident and says: "My Lord, I would be married:
-My Lord, I would be married and I would live happily, and also by your merit. Don't you recognize me, my Lord? I am the sick with consumption, the dying bride that you cured by the prayer of your John.... After your grace, I... my body was different (healthy instead of the other, dying one I had before); my soul was also different.... I don't know, but I no longer felt like me.... The joy of being cured, the certainty, therefore, of being able to marry - the fact of not being able to get married was what grieved me about my death - only lasted the first few hours. Then...
The young girl feels more and more confident, the words and ideas that she had lost in the state of confusion of seeing herself alone with the Master come back to her...
-Then I felt that I should not be only selfish, thinking only: "Now I will be happy," but that I should think of something bigger and go to you, to God, your Father and mine. Some small thing, but something that would express my gratitude. I thought long and hard, and when I saw my fiancé the following Saturday, I said to him: "Listen, Samuel. Without the miracle, I, after a few months, would have died, and you would have lost me forever. I would like to offer God a sacrifice - me with you - to tell Him that I praise Him and I am grateful to Him". And Samuel answered immediately, because he loves me: "Let's go to the Temple together to immolate the victim". But that was not what I wanted.
I am poor, a villager, my Lord; I know little and can do even less; but, through the hand you had placed on my sick chest, something had reached not only my pierced lungs but also my heart: to the lungs, health; to the heart, wisdom. I understood that the sacrifice of a lamb was not what my spirit that loved you... that loved you desired.
The girl is silent and blushes after this profession of love.
-Go on, without fear! What did your spirit want?
-Sacrifice something worthy of you, O Son of God! And then... and then I thought that it should be a spiritual thing, as befits God, that is, my sacrifice of prolonging the wait for marriage for love of you, my Savior. Marriage brings great joy, you know, when there is love, it is a great thing! A desire, an anxiety to marry!.... But I was no longer the same as a few days before. It was no longer for me the most beautiful thing.... I told Samuel and he understood me. He also decided to become a Nazarite for a year, to be counted from the day that should have been the wedding, that is, the day after the calends of Adar. In the meantime he set out in search of you to testify his love for you for having restored his betrothed to him, to testify his love for you and to get to know you. And he found you, after many months, in Agua Especiosa. I also went...
Your word finished changing my heart. The vow of before is no longer enough for me.... Like that almond tree out there, which under the increasingly hot sun has come back to life after months of death, and has blossomed and then will bear leaves and then fruit, so I too have been progressing in the knowledge of what is best. The last time, already sure of myself and what I wanted - during all these months I have been meditating -, the last time I was in Agua Especiosa you were no longer there, you had been forced to leave. Much I cried and prayed, so that the Most High heard me, persuading my mother to send me here with a relative who was going to Tiberias to speak with the courtiers of the Tetrarch. The overseer had told me that I would find you here. I found your mother. Her words, the simple fact of listening to her and of being at her side these two days, brought the fruit of your grace to full maturity."
The girl knelt as if she were kneeling before an altar, her hands folded on her chest. -Well, but what exactly do you want, what can I do for you?
- Lord, I would like... I would like something very important, that only You, who gives life and health, can give it to me, because I think that what You can give, You can take away? I would want the life you have given me to be taken from me before the year of my vow is over.....
-But why? Don't you feel grateful to God for having recovered your health?
Very much! -Infinitely! It is for one thing only: because living by his grace and by your miracle I have understood the best. -What is...?
-What it is to live like the angels, like your Mother, my Lord, like You... like your John lives.... The three lilies, the three white flames, the three beatitudes of the Earth, Lord. Yes, because I believe that it is a beatitude to possess God and that God is the property of the pure. I believe that he who is pure is a heaven with his God in the center and the angels around him..... Oh, my Lord, I would desire this..... Little have I heard Thee, little have I heard Thy Mother, the disciple and Isaac, and I have not known others to tell me Thy words, but it is as if my spirit always heard Thee and Thou art its Master.... I said, my Lord...
-Annalia, much is what you ask and much is what you give. Daughter, you have understood God and the perfection to which the creature can ascend in order to resemble and please the Most Pure One.
Jesus has taken in his hands the brown head of the girl, who is still kneeling, and is speaking to her, leaning towards her.
-He who was born of a Virgin - because he could not prepare for himself a nest not made of lilies - is nauseated, daughter, by the triple libidinousness of the world; he would be crushed by so much nausea if the Father, who knows what his Son lives on, did not intervene with his loving help to sustain his anguished soul. The pure ones are my joy; you give me back what the world takes from me with its inexhaustible baseness: blessed are you and the Father for it, child! Go in peace. Something will intervene and make your vow eternal. Be one of the lilies scattered along the bloody paths of Christ.
-My Lord, I would also like something else..... -What is it?
-Not to be there when your death comes.... I could not see the one who is my Life die.
Jesus smiles sweetly and wipes with His hand two threads of tears that run down the little brown face of the girl. -Don't cry. The lilies are never in mourning. You will laugh with all the pearls of your angelic crown when you see the crowned King enter his Kingdom. Go. May the Spirit of the Lord indoctrinate you between one coming of mine and the other. I bless you with the fire of Eternal Love.
Jesus looks into the garden and says:
-Mother! Here is a little daughter all to yourself. Now she is happy. Immerse her in your candors, now and every time we go to the Holy City, so that she may be snow of azure petals scattered on the throne of the Lamb.
And Jesus returns to his own while Mary remains with the girl, caressing her.
Peter, Andrew and John look at him questioningly. Jesus' shining face shows them his joy. Peter does not hold back and asks:
-With whom have you been talking so much, my Master? What have you heard to be so radiant with joy?
-With a woman who is at the dawn of life; with the woman who will be the dawn of many others to come. -Who?
-The virgins.
Andrew says quietly to himself:
-It's not her....
-No, it's not her. Anyway, do not tire of praying, with patience and kindness. Every word of your prayer is like a claim, a light in the night; it sustains and guides her.
-But for whom is my brother waiting?
-He is waiting for a soul, Peter. It is a great misery that he wants to transform into great wealth.
-And where did Andrew, who never moves, never speaks, and never takes any initiative, find it?
-On my way. Come with me, Andrew, let's go to Alpheus, to bless him in the company of his many grandchildren. You wait for me at the house of James and Jude. My Mother needs to be alone all day.
And going thus, some to one side, others to another, the secret envelops the joy of the first consecrated to virginity for love of Christ.