Imagination labors best in distant fields. I doubt if any man can stand
in the Grotto of the Annunciation and people with the phantom images of
his mind its too tangible walls of stone.
They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which
they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in the
vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained
miraculously suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported
then and still supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among
eight, it was found not difficult to believe it.
These gifted Latin monks never do anything by halves. If they were to
show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you
could depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on
also, and even the hole it stood in. They have got the “Grotto” of the
Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one’s throat is to
his mouth, they have also the Virgin’s Kitchen, and even her
sitting-room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with
Hebrew toys, eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all
clean, spacious, comfortable “grottoes.” It seems curious that
personages intimately connected with the Holy Family always lived in
grottoes—in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus—and yet nobody
else in their day and generation thought of doing anything of the kind.
If they ever did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to
wonder at the peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of.
When the Virgin fled from Herod’s wrath, she hid in a grotto in
Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The slaughter of the
innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a
grotto—both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that
these tremendous events all happened in grottoes—and exceedingly
fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble to ruin
in time, but a grotto in the living rock will last forever.