(3:30-33-42-47)(2:117)(19:16-28)(3:46)(21:19)(32:9-19)(17:3-44)
Mary was young and beautiful; she was in a period of life when she had to decide about her future. She was so exasperated with her life in the temple that she left it and went to her village, Nazareth. The time she had spent in the temple left such an unpleasant impression on her mind that she began to shun society and lived in seclusion, trying to find the solution to her problems.
“What am I going to do with myself?” she thought. “Am I to marry a priest of the temple and live the rest of my life there, or lead a normal life like all ordinary human beings?”
These questions appear very easy to answer; they were not easy for a nun to answer. Many further questions were related to them, and without solving them no definitive answer was possible. The first was about children, their mental and physical health, and their status in the society. Moreover, the people were saying that if a woman consecrated to the temple would marry outside the temple priests she would have distorted children. Sometimes the force of these unrealistic ideas had such a grip on the mind that these things really happened. Mary was facing a dilemma between disobeying the laws of society or losing the normal life she wanted to live.
It was beyond her power to reach a clear decision by thinking alone in a society where no data was available. At this point, God helped her. A man appeared in Mary’s chamber where she was retiring alone.
“I will seek the protection of God,” declared a perplexed Mary, “if you have respect for the law of God.”
“Do not be afraid of me,” said the man. “I am a messenger of God, sent to you to calm your doubts. You are going to have an illustrious son.”
“How can I have a child?” replied Mary. “As long as I lived in the temple, I was a chaste nun; no man has touched me so far. In my town, I have not transgressed any law.”
“What I have said,” replied the messenger of God, “will happen in accordance with the law of God. The child is not going to be like an ordinary child. He is going to be very robust, healthy, and a blessing for people. God will make him a prophet and send him to the Israelites; he will be a sign to distinguish between right and wrong. It is a decided matter that your child is going to be God’s messenger.”
The visit from God’s messenger calmed Mary’s disturbed mind and strengthened her courage. Moreover, a poor but courageous man, Joseph, who was not intimidated by the threats and warnings of priests, agreed to marry her. They quietly got married. After a while Mary became pregnant. When the time of delivery came Mary knew that nobody would help her in her time of distress, so husband and wife left for a new place where no one knew them. The excruciating pain of childbirth led Mary to the trunk of a palm tree. She was alone, without any help, away from the house, in a desert without a roof, delivering her first child; she became flummoxed and said, “It would have been much better if I had died long ago and people would have forgotten me.”
A voice from the slope came: “Do not lose courage, Mary. There is a stream of water nearby; the palm tree is full of ripe dates. Shake the trunk of the tree so that the ripe dates may fall on you. Eat the nourishing ripe dates, drink the water and look at your wonderful child. Do not worry about the questions of people. Just tell them that you are fasting and cannot answer them.”
There are some other places in the Quran where the birth of Christ is mentioned. The one thing that is forcefully emphasized is the spotless character of Mary and the difference between the ideas of God and those of human beings. For the Jews, Mary’s child was illegal because she had broken the laws of the temple, but according to the laws of God she was a truthful person who had the courage to act according to the dictates of the truth, and a childlike Christ was given to her.
Mary and Joseph found it impossible to live in their village. The authorities of the temple with a great vengeance were criticizing their marriage. After the birth of their first child, it was not safe to live among the Jews. So they migrated to a safe place. The Quran does not give details about the location. It only says that God made Mary and Christ a portent of the truth and gave them a green fertile land to live in. Some researchers think that Mary and Joseph migrated to Egypt and lived there until their son was old enough to travel back to the native land.
Mary’s child grew into an extraordinarily brilliant person. From a very young age, he was wise like a seasoned sage or philosopher. His remarks were precise and trenchant. When Mary returned to her community, all the members of the community along with the priests of the temple came to see her. They were astonished to observe that Mary had the courage to come back and face their criticism.
Some of them said, “O sister of Aaron, your mother was such a devoted Jew that she gave you to the temple at a young age to serve. Moreover, she always obeyed all the rules of the temple along with your father. They were both obedient to the temple, and you, their daughter, broke all the traditions of the past, preferred a carpenter over a priest, went away to rear the objectionable child, and you are back with him without fear. You are not a bit like your parents.”
Instead of answering them directly, Mary pointed towards her son and said, “Ask him; he will give you the answer.”
“What?” the head of the priests said in great anger. “We should discuss these matters of religious importance with a young man who was in a cradle a few years ago?”
“It is not fair that you don’t want to talk with me because I am young,” declared Jesus. “Age is not the criterion of truth. You cannot refuse to listen to me unless you know what I am going to say. The true fact is that I am a prophet of God. He has given me the scripture and made me a messenger to preach and establish His laws. You are talking and criticizing her in a loose tongue whereas she has done nothing wrong by breaking the rules of asceticism. I will always be affectionately caring for her. I am not going to be cruel to an innocent woman. You are raising objections about my birth, but God made me blessed where so ever I may be. Peace on the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive.”
