Today after First Saturday mass, as I prepared to mediate for fifteen minutes on a single mystery of the rosary, I wondered again whether I’d have enough "material" to work with. (But not for as long. I’m getting more confident about this situation.)
The second mystery is the mystery of the Visitation: Mary’s journey to visit Elizabeth. It’s all in the first chapter of Luke — which is always worth reading in full, if you ask me, perhaps the richest single chapter of all scripture. Here are some of the thoughts that came to me today:
The image of the Visitation is always an embrace or greeting between the two women, Mary and Elizabeth, the two pregnant mothers. And I’ve been in situations like that, been pregnant and greeting other pregnant women, pregnant friends. I’m taking a trip next month, in fact, pregnant, to visit a friend who’s expecting her first child (a friend, who, like Elizabeth, had great difficulty conceiving). I know the excitement of telling a friend, or hearing from a friend, of a new pregnancy. And that’s part of what is going on in the Visitation, this purely natural, joyful embrace. Especially with a first pregnancy, as in these pregnancies. Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it exciting?
But of course that’s not the beginning of the story. The Visitation is entwined with the Annunciation. It begins with Zechariah’s vision, leaving him literally dumbstruck, and Elizabeth’s miraculous conception of John the Baptist, and her five months’ seclusion after that. And then the angel appears to Mary, and announces the conception of the Lord, and even before Mary has a chance to utter her ecce ancilla domini, the angel gives her even more news: Elizabeth, astonishingly, is pregnant. Joy upon joy — wouldn’t it be overwhelming? Wouldn’t your head be spinning? Somewhere in Mary’s mind must have been the I must go to Elizabeth and see her and see if there’s anything I can do for her at the same time that she was about to give her "Yes" to God.
And so she "set out and traveled to the hill country" to visit Elizabeth, and don’t we know why? Elizabeth was six months pregnant, and Mary wound up staying "about three months." Did Mary stay long enough to be there when Elizabeth gave birth to John? Perhaps; perhaps not; it’s not clear. I like to think she was there, among the neighbors and relatives who "rejoiced," and perhaps even watched Zechariah write on the tablet "His name is John." I like to think that Mary, raised among other temple virgins, saw birth for the first time when Elizabeth brought forth John the Baptist in blood and water, strengthening Mary with wisdom and peace; and that she saw it for the second time when she birthed her own firstborn son. You, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways.
But back to that first meeting. So dramatic, surely with tears all around; Mary already knew of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, but this was the first time Elizabeth knew of Mary’s; she couldn’t have been expecting the visitor. It was for Elizabeth a kind of second Annunciation, borne to her by Mary and announced by a child’s "leap" in the womb. (What a verb! Have you ever seen the belly move when a sixmonths’ child leaps?) And don’t the two of them make there, a kind of universal picture of all womanhood at all times? The maiden-mother greeting the mother-crone, the one bearing the last of the prophets, the other bearing the beginning of the Word?
And after that meeting — read carefully what they said to one another — followed three months of quiet, ordinary perhaps, in any case unrecorded living. Elizabeth welcomed her, probably offered her food and rest; Mary stayed, ate with the family, helped with the household duties; and they both waited, and wondered.
bearing blog 