And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, who departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years (of age, or, according to S. Ambrose, of her widowhood), which departed not from the Temple. Not that she lived in the Temple, but she frequented it, and spent much time in it. So think Toletus, Jansenius, and Maldonatus. Others, however, think that she actually dwelt in the Temple; for hard by the Temple there were houses of religious women who served God "night and day"—as there afterwards were of deaconesses in the Christian Church, and still are of nuns. This appears from Exodus 38:8; 2 Maccabees 3:20; and 1 Samuel 2:22. These religious women were some virgins, and some widows, of which latter it seems, that Anna was one, as Canisius (Marialis, lib. i. xii) argues.
But served God with fastings and prayers night and day—that Isaiah , serving God, as the Arabic renders it. The Greek λατζεÏουσα, worshipping with "latria"—latria being due to God only. Hence is plain the falsehood of the teaching of the heretics, that f...
Thus the widow Anna, without intermission praying and watching, persevered in deserving well of God, as it is written in the I Gospel: "She departed not "it says, "from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day."
