I t is easy to think that Gabriel and the other angels knew what God was doing all along: that when the promise was made

I would like to start by asking you to consider an incorrect image. Imagine God, before he creates anything. He is not in Heaven, for He has not made it; He is not in space, for it does not yet exist. He is not anywhere, for the idea of place has yet to be created. So you cannot imagine anything outside of Him: you must simply imagine Him, and you are bathed in Him, swimming in the ocean of his being, an ocean with no shores and no surface, for all is submerged.

Medieval Christians had the habit of referring to our life in this world as in via, “on a journey,” as opposed to Heaven, where we would be in patria, “in the homeland.” Accordingly, they thought of themselves as viatores, “travelers” or “people of the way.” The Lord’s Supper, which to them was the pinnacle of the grace of God, was called viaticum, “waybread,” “that which sustains the journeyer.”