1 Samuel 1:9

And Anna rose, etc. The Church rose from the prolonged grief of its desolation, having now received confidence in supplicating the Lord. After being refreshed by his sacred body and inebriated by the precious chalice of his blood, while the Jewish teachers still remained on the same soil, ministering on the chair of Moses, keeping watch over the entrance to the heavenly kingdom so that they themselves might enter and teach those who wished to enter, she began to seek from the Lord with tears and prayers the gifts, which, before the mysteries of his incarnation were known or perceived, she could not yet presume.

You see, just as a widow who is destitute and all alone, much abused and wronged, will often not be alarmed at the imminent triumphal procession of emperor, bodyguards, shield bearers, horses, and all the rest of his advance retinue, but without need of a patron will brush past them all and with great confidence accost the emperor, exaggerating her own situation under pressure of her sense of need, so too this woman was not embarrassed, was not ashamed, though the priest was sitting there, to make her request in person and with great confidence approach the king. Instead, under the impulse of desire and in her mind ascending to heaven as though she saw God himself, she addressed him this way with complete ardor.

20. For what was it then for the holy Church to eat, except to receive the food of consolation through divine encouragement? And what was it for her to drink, except to rejoice in the sweetness of inner consolation poured into her? For if food strengthens, drink cheers; therefore we take food when, having seen the eternal rewards, we are strengthened amid adversities. And we drink, as it were, after food: because when the mind of the elect strengthens itself in the contemplation of eternal goods, it rejoices all the more abundantly amid the great adversities it endures, the more it sees greater rewards stored up in heaven for its great labors. Made bold by that heavenly refreshment, she renews her strength, so that she may despise earthly things all the more strongly, the more the love of heavenly things exalts her. Rightly therefore, after she had eaten and drunk, Anna is recorded to have risen. For she rose because she reformed her mind toward the urgency of preaching. 21. And because the Jewish people still had the rites of sacrifices, still had the honor of legal teaching, and the loftiness of pontifical dignity, the priest is said to sit upon the seat of Eli. Yet because he was able to exercise that teaching of the Law not spiritually but carnally, he sat not within the temple but before the doorposts of the temple. For what is the temple of the Lord but the spiritual understanding of the Holy Scriptures? The doorposts of the temple are the Law and Prophecy. Hence also on the mountain the Lord appeared transfigured in the midst of Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:3; Luke 9:30): because then the splendor of his divinity is beheld when his mysteries are sought not in the letter that kills (2 Pet. 1), but in the signification of the spiritual Law and prophecy. Eli therefore sat before the doorposts of the temple, that is, outside, because the teachers of the synagogue had been expelled from the spiritual understanding of the Scriptures, and yet in the subversion of the subject people, they had the authority of teaching and the dignity of prelacy. But Anna is written to have wept with a bitter soul.