EMV 3

EMV 3

Giotto di Bondone, Legend of Saint Joachim, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305.
Copyright	Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation
Version	2016 translation by Yves d'Horrer
Navigation	Contents of Volume 1
Previous	EMV 2
Next	EMV 5
Concordance	1979 translation: volume 1, chapter 3
The episode
Date of the vision	Wednesday, August 23, 1944
Estimated dating	Monday, October 1, 22 BC | 24 Tishri 3740.
Major themes treated	The model couple. Conjugal love.

3. At the Feast of Tabernacles. Anne and Joachim possessed Wisdom.

3.1 : Anne’s house differs from the one that Mary will inherit.

Before continuing, I make a remark.

The house did not seem to me to be that of Nazareth, which I know well. At least the room is very different. The kitchen garden is also larger; furthermore, there are fields, not many, but there are some. Later, after Mary’s marriage, there will only be the garden, large but limited to the kitchen garden; and I have never seen the room I just saw in other visions. I do not know if I should think that, for some financial reason, the parents of Mary parted with part of their property, or if Mary, once out of the Temple, took another house, which may have been given to her by Joseph. I do not remember if, in previous visions and teachings, I had a clear indication that the house in Nazareth was also her birthplace.

My head is very tired. And I immediately forget the words of the dictations in particular, even though the commandments remain very clear in my mind and the light remains in my soul. But the details immediately fade away. If I had to wait an hour before repeating what I heard, I would remember nothing except one or two main sentences. On the other hand, the visions remain alive in my mind, because I had to observe them myself. I receive the dictations. But the visions, it is up to me to perceive them. That is why they remain vivid in my mind, which made an effort to note them as they came.

I was hoping for a dictation on yesterday’s vision. But nothing.

3.2 : The camp of tents made of branches set up outside the walls of Jerusalem.

I begin to see and write.

Outside the walls of Jerusalem, a large crowd is on the hills and among the olive trees. It looks like a huge market. But there are neither tables nor stalls, nor the cries of charlatans and sellers, nor any games. There are numerous tents made of coarse wool, certainly waterproof, stretched over poles fixed in the ground; some trellises attached to these poles serve as decoration and provide shade. Others, on the contrary, are made of branches fixed to the ground and tied in this way, thus forming small green galleries. Under each, people of all ages and conditions discuss peacefully, in a meditation only troubled by the occasional cry of a child.

Evening falls and already the lights of small oil lamps shine here and there on this strange encampment. Around the lights, families take their meal, seated on the ground; mothers hold their youngest children on their bosom, and many of them, exhausted, fall asleep still holding some crumbs of bread between their rosy fingers; their head falls on the mother’s chest like chicks under the wings of the hen; the mothers finish their meal as best they can with their only free hand while the other holds their child to their heart. Meanwhile, other families have not yet begun to eat and talk in the twilight’s semi-darkness waiting for the meal to be ready. Fires light here and there, around which the women bustle. A very slow lullaby, almost a lament, soothes a child who is late to fall asleep.

Above, a clear blue sky is tinged more and more with dark blue until it appears as an immense veil of silky velvet, an azure black, on which, very softly, invisible pyrotechnicians and decorators fix bright jewels, some isolated, others forming strange geometric lines with the foremost position given to the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, with their shape of a cart whose pole rests on the ground after the oxen have been freed from their yoke. The North Star twinkles with all its fires.

I understand that it is October, because a loud male voice says:

"An October month, as rarely seen!"

3.3 : Anne, the barren, speaks with a mother of a large family.

Anne returns from a fire with things in her hands, stretched on a broad and flat bread like one of our pancakes, which serves as a plate. Alphaeus, clinging to her skirt, lets out his small voice. Joachim, standing on the threshold of a small hut made of trellises, speaks with a man about thirty years old, whom Alphaeus greets from a distance with a sharp cry: "Papa!"

Seeing Anne approach, Joachim hastens to light a lamp.

Anne passes like a queen among the rows of huts. Regal, she is nevertheless humble. She does not show haughtiness to anyone. She picks up the child of a poor woman who fell at her feet while stumbling during a playful run. As the boy’s face is all smeared with dirt and he is crying, she cleans him, consoles him, and returns him to his mother who runs up. In response to her apologies, Anne says:

"Oh, it’s nothing! I’m glad he didn’t get hurt. He is a beautiful child. How old is he?

– Three years. He’s the second to last and soon I’ll have another. I have six boys. Now, I want a girl… For a mother, a daughter is very important…

– The Most High has comforted you well!"

Anne sighs.

"Yes," replies the woman. "I am poor, but the children are our joy and the older ones already help us with the work. And you, madam (everything shows that Anne is of a higher social status and the woman has noticed), how many children do you have?

– None.

– None? This one isn’t yours?

– No, he belongs to a very good neighbor. He is my consolation…

– Were they dead, or else…

– No, I never had any.

– Oh!"

The woman looks at her with pity.

With a sigh, Anne greets her and goes to her hut.

"I made you wait, Joachim. I spoke with a poor woman, mother of six boys, can you believe it! And she is expecting another child soon."

Joachim sighs.

Alphaeus’ father calls his son, but he answers: "I’m staying with Anne to help her."

Everyone laughs.

"Let him be, he doesn’t bother us. He is not yet bound by the observance of the Law. Here and there, it’s just a little bird eating," says Anne, who sits down holding the child to her bosom.

She gives him some cake and, it seems to me, grilled fish. I see that she works on it before giving it to him, perhaps removing the bones. She first served her husband and eats last.

3.4 : Joachim reaffirms his hope for a miraculous maternity and Anne confides her prophetic dream to him.

The night is increasingly sprinkled with stars and the lights grow more numerous on the encampment. Then, imperceptibly, many of them go out. They are those of the people who dined first and now begin to sleep. The murmurs gradually diminish. No more children’s voices are heard. Only a few unweaned babies make their little lamb voices seeking their mother’s milk. The breath of the night passes over things and people, putting to sleep pains and memories, hopes and resentments. But it may be that these last two, even if diminished, survive instead in sleep, in dreams.

Anne says this to her husband, while rocking Alphaeus who falls asleep in her arms:

"Tonight, I dreamed that I would come to the Holy City next year for two feasts instead of just one. And one will be the offering at the Temple of my child… Oh, Joachim!

– Hope, hope, Anne! Did you learn nothing else? Did the Lord whisper nothing to your heart?

– Nothing. Only a dream…

– Tomorrow will be the last day of supplication. We have already made all the offerings, but we will renew them again tomorrow, solemnly. We will overcome God by the fidelity of our love. I still think that the same thing will happen to you as to Hannah of Elqana.

– God willing… and may I soon hear a voice tell me: ‘Go in peace. The God of Israel has granted you the grace you asked for!’"

– If this grace is given to you, your child will tell you himself by turning for the first time in your womb; it will be the voice of innocence, therefore the Voice of God."

Now the entire camp falls silent in the darkness. Anne brings Alphaeus back to the neighboring hut and lays him on the hay bed next to his brothers, who are already sleeping. She then lies down beside Joachim and their lamp goes out in turn: it was one of the last stars of the earth. Only the stars of the firmament remain to watch over the sleepers.

3.5 : The righteous are always wise.

Jesus says:

"The righteous are always wise: friends of God, they live in His company and He instructs them, He who is infinite Wisdom.

My grandparents were righteous and therefore possessed wisdom. It is truly that they could repeat what the Book says when it sings the praises of Wisdom in the book with the same name: 'She it is whom I loved and sought from my youth; I sought to take her as my wife.'

Anne, daughter of Aaron, was the strong woman our forefather speaks of.

And Joachim, descendant of King David, sought less charm and wealth than virtue. Anne possessed great virtue. In her, all the virtues united in a fragrant bouquet of flowers to form a unique reality, the most beautiful of all: Virtue. A real virtue, worthy to stand before the throne of God.

Thus Joachim twice married wisdom 'loving it more than another woman': the wisdom of God contained in the heart of the righteous woman. Anne sought nothing else but to unite her life with that of an upright man, with the certainty that uprightness brings joy to the family.

3.6 : Anne lacked only the crown of children.

And to be the emblem of the "Strong Woman" she lacked only to be crowned with children, for it is the glory of a wife, the justification of marriage, of which Solomon speaks. The only thing missing from her happiness was these children, these flowers of the tree which joined the neighboring tree and bears new fruits in abundance, where the two goodnesses merge into one, for her husband never caused her the slightest disappointment.

3.7 : In love as on the first day.

Having become an old woman, wife of Joachim for decades, she remained for him "the wife of his youth, his joy, his beloved doe, his graceful gazelle," whose caresses maintained the freshness and enchantment of their first wedding night and gently charmed his love; this remained as fresh as a flower wet with dew and ardent like a fire that a hand never ceases to feed. That is why, in their sadness of being childless, they said to each other "words of comfort in their concerns and misfortunes."

3.8 : They wanted a son, they had the Mother of God.

When the time came, Wisdom, after instructing them throughout their lives, enlightened them by nocturnal dreams as one sounds the reveille of the glorious poem that would be born of them and would be Mary, the all-holy, my Mother. If, in their humility, they did not imagine this, their heart nonetheless trembled with hope at the first announcement of the promise of God. Joachim’s words already reveal this certainty: "Hope, hope… We will overcome God by the fidelity of our love." They dreamed of a son: they had the Mother of God.

3.9 : The chastity of the spouses.

The words of the book of Wisdom seem to have been written for them: "Because of her I shall have glory among peoples… Because of her I shall have immortality and leave an eternal memory to those who come after me." But to gain all this, they had to acquire the royalty of a true virtue, lasting, which no event could touch. Virtue of faith, virtue of charity, virtue of hope, virtue of chastity. The chastity of the spouses! They possessed it, because it is not necessary to be a virgin to be chaste. Chaste households are guarded by angels and they bear good children, who make the virtue of their parents the standard of their own life.

3.10 : Today love and the bridal chamber are desecrated.

But now, where are they? Currently, children are no longer wanted, but neither is chastity. That is why I tell you that love and the bridal chamber are desecrated."

The Gospel as it was revealed to me (Maria Valtorta).