babylon 3

The Holy Family were soon settled somewhat comfortably. 

They had little stools and tables, wicker screens, and a well-ordered fireplace also. 

The Egyptians ate sitting, flat on the ground. 

In the wall of Mary’s sleeping place I saw a recess [uitsparing] that Joseph had hollowed out, and in it was Jesus’ little bed. Mary’s couch was beside it, and I have often seen her by night kneeling in prayer to God before that little bed. 

Joseph slept in another enclosed corner.

The oratory of the Holy Family was in a passage outside. 

Joseph and the Blessed Virgin had separate places in it. 

And Jesus too had His little corner, where He prayed sitting, standing, or kneeling. 

There was a kind of little altar before the Blessed Virgin’s place, a small table covered with red and white. This table was like a leaf [blad] on hinges [scharnieren], that could be let down from or put up against the wall. When let down, it disclosed [onthulde] a shelf [plank] in the wall itself, and on the shelf were various objects, among them something that was held as sacred. 

I saw little bushes in pots formed like chalices. A withered [verdorde], though still whole branch, on top of which was the lily, that had blossomed in Joseph’s hand, when he had been chosen by lot in the Temple for Mary’s spouse. 

And something like fine, thin, white sticks, that were placed crosswise [kruiselings] in the rounded part of the recess. The blossoming lily branch was the top of Joseph’s staff. It was stuck in a box, about one-and-a-half inches in diameter. 

The little sticks that were arranged crosswise, were also in a box, a transparent one. There were about five of those little white sticks of the thickness of a coarse straw [grof rietje]. They were crossed and bound in the middle to a kind of little sheaf [schoof]. 

But one pays very little attention to such things when in vision, one’s thoughts are chiefly intent upon the holy personages there presented.

~bron~