When the angel had given his message and had gone away, Mary rose up in haste and made a journey to the home of Zacharias and Elizabeth. When Elizabeth saw Mary, she was filled with the Spirit of the Lord, and said:

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed among men shall be your son! And why is it that the mother of my Lord comes to visit me? Blessed is the woman who believed that the promise of the Lord to her shall be made true!"

Then Mary was filled with the Spirit of the Lord, and broke out into a song of praise. She stayed with Elizabeth for nearly three months, and then went again to her own home at Nazareth.

As the angel had said, to the aged woman Elizabeth was given a son. They were going to name him Zacharias, after his father. But his mother said: "No, his name shall be John."

"Why," they said, "none of your family have ever been named John!"

They asked his father Zacharias, by signs, what name he wished to be given to the child. He asked for something to write upon; and when they brought it, he wrote, "His name is John. " Then all at once, the power to hear and to speak came back to Zacharias. He spoke, praising and blessing God; and he sang a song of thanks to God, in which he said:

"You O child, shall be called a prophet of the Most High; to go before the Lord, and to make ready his ways."

When John was growing up, they sent him out into the desert on the south of the land, and there he stayed until the time came for him to preach to the people; for this child became the great prophet John the Baptist.