Ethiopic
Behold, I will tell you about my
sin. When we were fleeing, Joseph, two of his children, and I, a terror was
upon me, and I heard the voice of the infants behind me, saying, ‘You do not
weep and you do not lament: you see and you do not see; you hear and you do not
hear.’ And when it had said this, I
turned around to see who was speaking with me. And then he had returned and I
did not know where he went. And I said to Joseph, ‘Let us go from this place, because
I saw an infant who is not from this world.’ And then when I looked, he appeared
to me, and I found that he was my son. And he said to me, ‘Mary, my mother,
every sin is imputed to you, because you have tasted the bitter as the sweet.’
I did not believe, my brothers, that I had found so much glory, until I gave
him birth, since I did not at all know the menstruation of women, because of
him. Now, however, I understand. And all of this took place and everything was
said to me and made known to me then on the road, as was his power. And every
soul hopes, both [those] of the righteous and the wicked.” When she had said this,
she called her family and said to them, “Arise and pray.” And when they prayed,
they sat and began to speak among themselves about the greatness of Christ
[and] the sign that he made.
“The Book of Mary’s Repose,” in The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mary (trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker; Apocryphes:
Collection De Poche De L’Aelac 17; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2023), 89-90