the Son of God and his Virgin Mother. Mary, too, seemed to not understand how she, as a virgin, could give birth to the Messiah, “since I do not know a man” (Luke 1:34, translated by the author from the original Greek). She knew, as we all know, that a woman cannot be pregnant without union with a man. Since she had experienced no such union (nor did she plan one, as we shall see), she wondered how this Virgin Birth could come about. Yet it was God’s will that his Son enter the world through a virgin.