[1][2][3] In the late first century BC, a group of marauders raid a Jewish neighborhood and abduct several young girls.

A couple, Joachim and Anna, manage to hide their young daughter before the raiders burst into their home and use a dog in an attempt to sniff out any girls they could kidnap.

Despite the dog visible to the little girl from her hiding place, it inexplicably fails to notice her scent and the raiders leave the home.

They are eventually betrothed, considered legally married while Joseph builds their home after which they were to have their wedding ceremony and begin to live together.

When she presses the angel as to how this was to be possible, she is told that nothing was impossible for God, and in fact, her kinswoman Elizabeth, who was elderly and thought to be barren, was in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

She shortly leaves for Ain Karem to visit Elizabeth, whose unborn child leaps in her womb at Mary's greeting.

Joseph is quite understandably upset, but unwilling to subject Mary to the death penalty for adultery, he dismisses her quietly.

However, an angel appears to him in a dream and tells him to not fear to take Mary as his wife, and that the child she bears was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

As Mary's due date approaches, a decree is issued from Caesar Augustus ordering a census of the Empire, and everyone was to register in their ancestral town.

Mary goes with him to register, and after several days' journey, they arrive only to find all accommodations full, with none willing to give up their place for a pregnant woman.

Prior to their arrival in Bethlehem, the Magi from the East had stopped by Herod's palace in Jerusalem to inquire about the new star.

However, an angel warns Joseph, and he takes Mary and the child and they flee to Egypt where Jesus spends his early years.

He is confronted by Herod's son Antipas, his wife Herodias, and a prostitute working at the Herodian court, Magdalen.

Mary's son, Jesus, is later seen in the desert in prayer, undergoing a temptation from the devil and overcoming it, before leaving to begin his ministry.

He tells her his hour has not yet come, but nonetheless, Jesus orders the servants to fill the jars with water, and he miraculously turns it into wine.

Later in Jerusalem, Jesus requests Magdalen to find a safe place for his mother while he and his disciples prepare for the Passover.