25 Steps with Mary: from Nazareth to Bethlehem

Dear friends:

Last week, my friend Lourdes told me that she had not been receiving my blogs. She was afraid that she had been dropped from the mailing list. She wasn’t. The truth is that I have not written a single word in almost four months. I have not touched my personal journal nor my blog. I could call it writer’s block but the reality is that I have not felt the stirrings to write anything. I guess I have been experiencing a period of desolation, and my well has run dry.

I think it’s time to hit the restart button, add water to the well, and resume my spiritual journey through my blog. Ever since I went to the Holy Land last year, I have been thinking a lot about Mama Mary’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem with a side trip first to Ein Karem. I have been trying to see the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity from her point of view. And even though I could never come close to feeling what Mary felt during those nine months, and I could never walk in her shoes, I have been attempting to walk beside her so I could catch just a passing glimpse of what her experience must have been like.

So this Advent, I would like to invite you to take a walk with Mary. We will start on Sunday, December 1st in Nazareth, when the angel appeared to Mary, and announced that she would be the mother of the Son of God. We will walk with her to Ein Karem to visit her cousin Elizabeth. We will be with her when she tells Joseph that she’s with child. We will walk with her to Bethlehem where we will witness the Nativity through her eyes.

This Advent, you are invited to take a peek at Mary’s Journal: 25 Steps with Mary, from Nazareth to Bethlehem. If you would like to receive the meditations by email, sign up directly on the blog’s web version (it doesn’t work on the phone view). Input your email address where it says “Receive New Posts by Email.” This will then take you to a form where you have to mark that you are not a robot, and hit “complete subscription request.” You will then receive an email from “Feedburner Email Subscriptions.” If you don’t receive it, look in your junk folder. You must follow the link in order to activate the email subscription. Once you see the message: “Email Subscription Confirmed,” you are signed up and you should start receiving the meditations on December 1st.

I wish it to be understood, that all I will write on this journey is a product of my imagination, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and with the help of the references that I mention below. My words are limited and my mind is too small to be able to fully comprehend what Mary experienced from Annunciation to Nativity. I am filled with dread because my thoughts and my words will never be enough to be able to reveal the mystery of the Incarnation. But I place myself in God’s hands “for nothing will be impossible with God” Luke 1:38.

May I be a pencil in His hands, and may He use me to reveal a small fragment of the mystery that took place over 2,000 years ago.

References for this Journey:

1. New American Standard Bible (NASB)
2. The Mystical City of God: A Popular Abridgement of the Divine History and Live of the Virgin 

3. Mother of God by Venerable Mary of Agreda
4. The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of God by Fulton J. Sheen
5. Las Palabras Calladas: Diario de Maria de Nazaret by Pedro Miguel Lamet