Anne Catherine Emmerich · 23 of 113

II. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION · 2.13 THE HOLY KINGS CELEBRATE A FEAST HONORING MARY’S CONCEPTION.

I saw that the two holy kings who were still alive were celebrating with their tribe a three-day feast starting from today, December 8 th. On this night, fifteen years before Christ’s birth, they had seen for the first time the star promised by Balaam rise in the sky [ Num. 24.17: ‘A star shall rise out of Jacob’]—the star for which they and their forefathers had waited so long, scanning the heavens in patient watchfulness. They discerned in it the picture of a virgin, bearing in one hand a scepter and in the other a balance. The scales were held even by a perfect ear of wheat in the one and by a cluster of grapes in the other. Therefore every year since their return from Bethlehem they kept a three-day feast beginning with this day.