When Lady Birgitta, the bride of Christ, was in Rome and was once absorbed in prayer, she began to think about the Virgin Birth and about the very great goodness of God who willed to choose such a very pure mother for himself. And her heart then became so greatly inflamed with love for the Virgin that she said within herself: "O my Lady, Queen of Heaven, my heart so rejoices over the fact that the most high God forechose you as his mother and deigned to confer upon you so great a dignity that I would rather choose for myself eternal excruciation in hell than that you should lack one smallest point of this surpassing glory or of your heavenly dignity."

And so, inebriated with the sweetness of love, she was above herself, alienated from her senses and suspended in an ecstasy of mental contemplation. The Virgin appeared then to her and said to her, "Be attentive, O daughter: I am the Queen of Heaven. Because you love me with a love so immense, I therefore announce to you that you will go on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem at the time when it pleases my Son. From there you will go to Bethlehem; and there I shall show you, at the very spot, the whole manner in which I gave birth to that same Son of mine, Jesus Christ; for so it has pleased him."