Once, as Anna prayed beneath a laurel tree near her home in Galilee, an angel appeared and said to her, "Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world." Anna replied, "As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life." This is how Anna became the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.