Flower of Devotion

On the feast of Christmas, it seemed to St. Mechtilde that she saw the Blessed Virgin sitting on a mountain with a wonderfully beautiful Child in her bosom. And the saint said to her, “My Lady, where are we at this moment?” The Blessed Virgin answered: “On the mountain of Bethlehem. Indeed, the city stood on a mountain; although the cave in which I gave birth to the Son of God lay above the city near the gate, therefore it is said that Christ was born in Bethlehem.”
St. Mechtilde asked, “How could the shepherds come to the Child at night?” The Blessed Virgin replied: “The profound calm that reigned that hour gave them this certainty. At the same time, the gates of the city were left open to a great influx of people.” St. Mechtilde said, “Oh, Lady, why did you not have a bed or any other comfort?” The Blessed Virgin answered: “It was not necessary, especially since I gave birth to My Child without pain.”
St. Mechtilde continued: “When your relatives and friends visited you, what could you give them? Thou, poor woman, and yet Queen of Heaven?” The Blessed Virgin answered, “I had no need for me to have anything, for they had brought everything with them.”
St. Mechtilde said, “What food did you give your Son when you weaned him?” Mary answered, “I have prepared for Him a dish of white bread and wine.”
Later, when St. Mechtilde reflected on this and asked herself whether the Lord Jesus, after His return from Egypt to Nazareth, had also had relations with His relatives, the Child Himself answered her: “How do you think why it stands in the Gospel that they sought Him among relatives and acquaintances,” if not because I have sometimes stayed with them? How, further, do you think why John the Evangelist, whom I called from the wedding feast, followed me so willingly, if not because he was so pleased with my intercourse and my customs, which he had often learned from my experience, that they easily moved him to imitate me?”