7. When she reached the age of twelve, when [Mary] was praying one
night by the doors of the sanctuary, it came to pass at midnight that a light
that was brighter than the sun shone out and a voice came out of the sanctuary
towards her, saying, ‘You will bear [D 19] my Son.’ But she kept this quiet,
telling no one of the mystery, until the time when Christ was taken up [into
heaven].
. . .
Joseph, on taking his cousin Mary from the hand of the Lord and all
the priests who witnessed this, led her into his house and entrusted his two
daughters to her so that she could give them instruction and understanding [so
as to be] like herself. And she passed her life in Joseph’s house with both
humility [D 21] and piety. When she had spent six months there, fasting in the
accustomed way until the ninth hour [M 197] of the day, the archangel Gabriel,
who was sent from God, revealed himself to her as she was praying. And he
disclosed to her all the mysteries about the Only-Begotten Son of God that are
written down in the Gospels. And no one from her household knew what had
happened, nor did she report this to anyone—not even to Joseph himself—until that
time when she saw her Son ascending into heaven. On this account, the
Evangelist Matthew says, ‘And he did not know her until she had borne her son,
the first-born’, that is to say, he did not know about the mysteries of God that
surrounded her or the hidden depth of the things that had been fulfilled in
her. (Epiphanios the Monk, Life of Mary 7, 10, in Life of Mary, the Theotokos
and Life and Acts of St Andrew the Apostle [trans. Mary B. Cunningham;
Translated Texts for Byzantinists 13; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2023], 81-82, 84)
