After the famous Jesus' presentation to the doctors of the temple in Jerusalem, Mary received the visit of Elizabeth and son, in her poor little house in Nazareth.
After the habitual greetings, in the unfolding of the family subjects, both cousins came to talk about both the children, whose birth were anticipated by singular happenings and enclosure of strange circumstances. While the patriarch Joseph attended to the last daily needs of his humble workshop, they entertained both in curious lecture, changing affectionately tender maternal confidences.
– What really surprises me– Elizabeth was saying with a kind smile on her face – is John’s temperament. He is inclined to profound meditations, in such a young age. It’s not rare for me to look around the house and not be able to find him. He is almost all the time around fig trees or walking alongside scorched roads, as if his little front head is dominated by serious thoughts.
– These children to me – Mary responded, intensifying the brightness of her eyes – bring to humanity the divine light to a new path. My son is also behaving like this, involving my heart feel like in constant watchfulness. I sometimes find him on his own near the waters. Some other times I find him having a profound conversation with travelers that seek Samaria or other villages even far more distance, in the neighborhoods of the lake. Most of the time he surprises me with the gentle words he says to washer-women, the transients, to the suffering beggars... He talks about his communion with God with so much eloquence. I never found this in the observations of our doctors which make me wonder about his destiny.
- We, mothers, always have our spirit shaken by unjustifiable fears, despite all belief values – Elizabeth said, convinced.
As if she let thrill by loving dreads, Mary continued:
– Still some days ago, we were in Jerusalem, in the customary commemorations, and the easiness of argumentation with which Jesus elucidated the problems that were presented to him by the Temple advisors let us all afraid and perplexed. His science cannot belong to this world: It comes of God that certainly manifests by his lips, friends of purity. Noticing him the answers, Eleazar called Joseph, in private, and warned him that the boy seems to have been born for the perdition of many powerful in Israel.
Since her cousin was listening carefully to what she was saying, Mary proceeded with humid eyes, after a brief pause:
- Aware of this warning, I sought Eleazar in order to intercede for Jesus, among his valuable relationships with the Temple authorities. I thought in Jesus unprotected childhood and feared by his future. Eleazar promised to intercede in his favor; therefore, when I was returning to Nazareth, I felt as if my fears were multiplied. I talked to Joseph, more carefully, concerning the little boy, worried with his prepare convenient for life! Therefore, on the following day, Jesus came closer to me in the morning and asked: – “Mom, what do you want me to do‘? Perhaps have you not been witnessing my communion with the Father who is in the Heaven?!” I was so surprised with his question I hesitantly said: – “I care for you, my son! I believe you need a better preparation for life...” But, as if he was in the middle of the knowledge that passed in my intimate, he pondered: “Mother, all the useful and generous preparation in the world is precious; However, I already am with God. My Father, however, wishes us our every exemplification that is good, and I will choose, thus, the best school.” On the same day, even though he knew the beautiful promises made by the doctors of the temple, Jesus approached Joseph and asked with humility, to admit him in the jobs. Since then, as if he wanted to teach us that the best school for God is the one of home and of the own effort, — concluded the maternal word with simplicity, — he improves the woods of the workshop, seizes the hammer and the adze, filling with enthusiasm the house, with his sweet happiness!
Elizabeth listened carefully to her cousin’s narrative. After other small material considerations, both noted that the first shadows of the evening went down in the landscape, graying the cloudless sky. They then realized that the day was getting darker. The carpentry was already closed and Joseph sought the serenity of the interior domestic for repose.
Both mothers exchanged worried glances and asked themselves where would have gone both children.
Nazareth, with its landscape, had one of the most beautiful of all Galilee, perhaps the most attractive nook of Palestine. Its streets, humble and stony, its teeny houses, its singular stores group in a wide concavity on top of the mountains, in the north of the Esdraelon. Its horizons are narrow and without interest; however, the ones that go up a little far, up to where are located the little houses more elevated, they will find for their amazed look the most beautiful perspectives. The sky seems to lengthen itself, covering the wonderful set, in an infinite dilation.
Mary and Elizabeth sighted their children, side by, side, on a prominence bathed by the utmost evening sunrays. From far, it figured them that Jesus' hairs were flitted by the tender breezes of the high. His small index finger showed to John the landscapes that were multiplied by distance, as a great general who did to know the minuteness of his plans to a trust soldier. Before their eyes came the mountains of Samaria, the summit of Megiddo, the prominences of Gelboe, the slender scene of Mount Tabor, where, later, would have the unforgettable Transfiguration of Christ, the valley of consecrated river of Christianity, the Safed's summits, the gulf of Khalfa, the high scenery of Pereu, in a superb set of mounts and valleys, near to crystalline waters.
Who could know what had been the lonely conversation kept between both? Distanced in the time, we might presume that it was, in the Earth, the first agreement between the Love and the Truth, for the world conquest. We know, however, that in the immediate morning, leaving the precursor in his mother's affectionate company, asked Elizabeth to Jesus, with amusing interest: – “don’t you want to come with us?” – the small carpenter from Nazareth answered prophetically with inflection of profound kindness – “John will leave first”.
Elapsed some years, we will find the Baptist in his glorious task of preparation for the way to the Truth, preceding the divine work of the Love, which the world would know in Jesus Christ.
John, in fact, left first, in order to execute the initial operations for the great conquest. Dressed of skins and nurturing with wild honey, clarifying with energy and letting him be decapitate in testimony to the Truth, he preceded the lesson of mercy and of kindness. The Master of masters wanted to put the frank and rough person of his prophet in the threshold of his glorious teachings and, because of this, we find in John Baptist one of the most beautiful symbols of all the immortal symbols of the Christianity. Salome represents the triviality of the world, Herod and his wife, the political conventionalism and the private interest. John was the Truth, and the Truth, in its task of improvement, lacerates and hurts, letting carry to the extreme sacrifices.
Like the pain that precedes the powerful manifestations of the Light in the intimate of the hearts, the Truth receives the block of crude marble and works it the roughness so that Love work arises, in its divine purity. John Baptist was the clamorous voice of the desert. First hour worker, is he the rude symbol of the Truth that plucks the strongest roots of the world, so that God Kingdom prevails in the hearts. Expressing the austere discipline that precedes spontaneity of Love, the fight so that they undo the shadows of the way, John is the first signal of the active Christian, in war with his own imperfections in his interior world, in order to establish in himself the sanctuary of his accomplishment with Christ. For this reason was that of him Jesus said: “Amongst those that are born of women, John the Baptist is the greatest of all.”
Book Boa Nova (Good News), by the spirit Humberto de Campos,
psychographed by Francisco Cândido Xavier, edited by BSF
Translation: Carolina von Scharten, London, Sir William Crookes Spiritist Society linked to BUSS - The British Union of Spiritist Societies