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 8th. 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.