Reading: Lk 1:39-45
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If I had to choose a favorite scene from the Gospels, it might very well be the one depicted in today’s reading from Luke, the brief story of Mary’s arrival at the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah, what we call the Visitation. At first glance these seven short verses seem to tell us very little, other than providing us with a nice heartwarming and pious story. For most of us, that’s probably the end of it; and we go on without giving these events a second thought. But the Holy Spirit didn’t inspire Luke and his fellow evangelists simply to relate pleasant stories. No, He had a definite purpose – and it’s a purpose you and I can begin to discern when we plumb the depths of meaning present in this brief passage.
Perhaps the best way to begin is to picture the scene in our mind’s eye. It’s a scene that artists, including virtually all the great masters, have tried to depict. But, you know, they all seem to miss something. Mary and Elizabeth are usually depicted very formally as if they were ladies in waiting at some Renaissance court. Interestingly, such formality is totally absent from the scene described by Luke.
To begin with, Mary and Elizabeth were Jews, women steeped in the exuberance of their Semitic culture. When they laughed, they laughed joyfully. When they cried, the tears flowed in torrents. And when they mourned, they wailed. They didn’t hide their emotions behind a facade of respectable restraint. In fact, I have seen only one painting that depicts the scene as Luke describes it. I don’t know the artist’s name because it’s an unsigned illustration in, of all places, an old St. Joseph’s Sunday Missal. (I've included it above.) It shows the older Elizabeth, standing at her doorstep, her arms spread wide in greeting with a huge smile spread across her face. How does Luke describe it? “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb…’”
These words weren’t whispered. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, shouted them out to heaven itself. Maybe the world didn’t hear her, but I’ll bet her neighbors in that tiny village did…and so did the angels worshiping at the Father’s throne. Thanks to that same Holy Spirit, Elizabeth knows who it is that visits her…and she is overwhelmed by the revelation. Her joy tempered by humility, she asks her young cousin a question. Although it goes unanswered, the answer is there, right before us in the person of Mary.
When she embraces Mary, Elizabeth knows instantly that everything has changed — that everything her people have longed for -- freedom, forgiveness, salvation – is now alive among them. In a world where women could not legally testify, Elizabeth became God’s witness, testifying to the truth. “But who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Who indeed? Quite simply, Elizabeth is the mother of the prophet; but she is also someone in need. For one day, in that land of high plateaus and rugged valleys, the one who was barren became fruitful dispelling the emptiness of her life.
When the archangel reveals this to Mary, she doesn’t hesitate. For Elizabeth was old and would need support and assistance during the final months of her pregnancy. Driven by love, with no regard for her own needs or even the slightest tinge of pride in her new status as Mother of God’s only Son, Mary leaves at once to care for Elizabeth. And this was no stroll down the block. The journey from Nazareth in Galilee to the little village in the hill country was a long and perilous one, a trek of several days.
So what are we to make of Mary, this young girl, probably no more than 15 years old, who would undertake such a selfless act of charity? Why does Luke include this incident in his Gospel? Because Mary is presented to us as a model, as the one who hears God’s Word, embraces it, and carries it out in her life. Conceived without sin and filled with God’s grace, her every act is in total accordance with God’s Will.
We see this first in her response to the good news of the archangel Gabriel, a response that God seeks from each of us. The Father didn’t command Mary to bear His Son. Rather, Mary is given a choice. And God awaits her answer. Not only God, but the whole world, the entire span of human history, awaits Mary’s answer.
For in that decisive moment, God places the salvation of the human race, past, present and future, in the tiny hands of this simple, teenage Jewish girl. She need utter only one word to embrace the living Word of God in her womb. Her response, a response straight from the heart, brings a sigh of joy from all creation: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” It is a choice of total abandonment to God’s Will. As Elizabeth proclaims, “Blessed is she who trusted that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled.”
Yes, Mary is the woman who has trusted, who has believed, who said “Yes” to God’s Word and acted on it. On her visit to Elizabeth she carries Christ not for herself, but for a world in need. And fittingly, given the plague of abortion that has spread across our planet, the first person to greet her as Mother of God is an unborn baby, John the Baptist, who leaped for joy in his mother’s womb when Mary first arrived.
Here in the hill country of Judea, in the boondocks of this insignificant corner of the Roman Empire, two surprising babies met and danced to the beat of their mothers’ joy. In an extraordinary moment, two pregnant women — one at the beginning of her life and the other moving towards its end – greeted each other in joy and wonder. And so, what do Mary and Elizabeth offer us in these final days of advent?
In our world, where women and children are too often abused and discarded, these two holy women remind us that our bodies are temples. Through their witness we are reminded that we, too, are blessed — that God is with us, no matter how barren or forsaken we might feel. Elizabeth shows us how to stand unafraid in the barrenness of the world and wait joyfully for the coming of the Lord.
Yes, they show us how to wait for Christ. Not only for His second coming, but for His constant coming every day – His coming as He first came to us, in poverty and powerlessness. This is not pious rhetoric, but the Word of God. Jesus comes to us in the hungry, the thirsty; in the homeless stranger; in the sick and the shackled. Mary saw that even before Her Son proclaimed it. In her Magnificat, her song of joy, Mary rejoices that God has “looked with favor on His lowly servant.” He “has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things.”
The problem is, God fills the hungry not with miraculous manna from heaven, but through us. And the hungers of the human family cry out to us: hunger for bread; hunger for freedom from persecution; hunger for peace; hunger for God. Their cry is more than a human cry; it is a cry from the Gospel itself, from the Word of God.
His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you." Jn2:5
As Jesus’ disciples, to model ourselves on Mary we must listen to that Word and act on it in the circumstances in which God places us. One thing is certain: God is not telling us to do nothing. Discipleship isn’t easy. It doesn’t come cheap. It demands that we, like Mary, become bearers of Jesus, carrying Him to those in need. And like Mary, God gives us a choice. The same choice made by the Apostles when they heard Jesus say, “Come, follow me.”
For us, it is a choice founded on the certainty of God’s promise of eternal life. It is a choice founded on faith and on hope, a hope of expectation, the hope of Jesus’ return, His second coming when He comes in power and glory. This is the other Advent that we celebrate today.
The question for us, then, is will we, like Mary, make that choice? Can we set aside our willful natures and abandon ourselves to living according to God’s loving will? The good news is in the promise of Jesus, given to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “Whoever loves me will keep my Word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”
So, you see, Christ wants to dwell within each of us, to make us God-bearers, so, just like Mary, we can carry Him to others. With Christ deep within us, and seeing Christ all around us in others, our lives can become a ceaseless Advent, a visible sign to the world of His love and His final coming. We need only join with Mary’s voice and say, “Whatever you want, Lord,” and then do what he tells us. And it’s never too late, for He continues to call us to Him all the days of our lives. As Gabriel told Mary, “Nothing is impossible with God.”
Finally, the gospel passage form Luke describes the wonderful results of Elizabeth’s and Zechariah’s preparation. We see them standing firm and doing God’s will in their lives, and doing so in a way that leads others to recognize the presence of God in their lives as well.
