It has been noted from early times in the Church that John
the Baptist, while still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, ‘leapt for joy’
at the proximity of Jesus being carried by Mary. whereas Elizabeth responded to the presence
of Mary. Is that interpretation unquestionable
however? Let us study the words of
Scripture.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s
greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy
Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me that the mother
of my Lord should come to me?
We are literally told: When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth herself greeted and praised YOUNG Mary for honouring her with her presence for her own (Elizabeth’s) joyful giving-birth, acclaimed, thanks to local friends and relative’s having made a collective decision to a safe-guard this first child-birth of elderly Elizabeth by their own long, caring and calming, experience. Elizabeth had learnt much from her husband’s experience as ‘doubting Thomas’ and she immediately recognized and proclaimed the ultimate cause of Mary (a young, inexperienced relative)’s presence: Blessed is she who believed; a gift she and her husband Zechariah had only learned to embrace after much suffering.
Why did Elizabeth rejoice at the immediate presence of Mary
herself rather than at the close proximity of the Child Mary was carrying, a
Child which she acknowledges as being ‘her Lord’?
Listen again carefully to Elizabeth’s words of greeting to
Mary; her first words – at the instigation of her own child leaping for joy at
Mary’s proximity -- are words with reference to Mary as mother of the
Child she was carrying:
Most blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
Then she goes on to speak, as a senior, more experienced
woman to a young virgin, as woman to woman, Israelite to Israelite:
Blessed
are you WHO BELIEVED that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.
Dear Chosen People of God, today Mother Church rejoices in,
wonders at, and strives to understand and appreciate ever better, the
heavenly Father’s wondrous gift to mankind of faith, believing-faith,
in His beloved, only-begotten Son, in His chosen role as Redeemer of mankind.
The whole story of God’s dealings with His Chosen People
started with God making a promise to Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would
have a child despite their old age.
Abraham believed that promise of God, he believed you might say against
all medical probabilities and despite the deep disappointments he and Sarah had
suffered repeatedly over many years because of their childlessness, a state so
alien to Israel’s traditions. Abraham
glorified God by putting more trust in His spoken promise than in his own years
of bitter experience, and the no-doubt snide words of other Israelites not
above commenting on their lack of offspring.
St. Paul tells us that such trust in God:
Was credited to his
(Abraham’s) account as righteousness. (Romans
4:3)
Thus, he was to be the father of
all who believe, so that to them also righteousness may be credited. (Romans 4:11)
He is our father in the sight of
God, in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and calls into being what
did not exist. (Romans 4:17)
That is how God’s People came into being, through FAITH,
and that is why Elizabeth, herself rejoicing in the fulfilment of a promise of
God, greeted Mary personally by saying:
Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that
what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.
St. Augustine puts it, artistically, very clearly when he
writes that Mary conceived Jesus in her heart by faith before she conceived Him
physically in her womb; words which are an echo of the teaching of Jesus
Himself (Luke 11:27-28):
A woman from the crowd called out
and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that carried You and the breasts at which
You nursed.” He replied, “Rather,
blessed are those who hear the word of God and (believing) observe it.”
And so, dear People of God, we who follow St. Luke’s lead and
join with Elizabeth in her greeting to Mary, are brought back to Jesus
immediately and with deepened conviction, for Mary’s faith is centred on the
miraculous Gift of God’s own Son which
no human mind could then conceive without God’s most special grace … given to
Joseph (You shall call His name Jesus),
and to Elizabeth thanks to the closeness of her spiritual relationship with
Mary. Give thanks, therefore, to God,
dear Catholic people, for the wondrous beauty of His truth and the glorious
gift of our faith.
And how much we need Mary’s example and Elizabeth’s
spiritual awareness this Christmas time where all the celebrations seem to
trumpet but one thing: GIFTS manifesting human GOOD-COMPLACENCY!! And
people say, “Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” In our modern western world God’s Gift to
man is forgotten, ignored, even denied, while so many people
publicly rejoice about their own giving-gifts-goodness, without the need
of any God interfering in their lives.
However, Mary has another supremely important lesson for us
to appreciate in this Advent time.
God the Father Himself, by His Spirit, made Mary of
Nazareth one with Jesus her Son through faith, love, and body-and-blood physicality;
in no way are they to be separated. Mary is now living eternally in heaven for
the glory of God, and her prayerful influence there for us on earth is totally for
the glory of her dear, dear, Son in the hearts of all men, so that those
well-known words of Jesus:
What God has joined together, let no man separate
are most important and significant for our considerations
today.
In Luke’s story of the Visitation of Our Lady, Mary is
shown as a figure, a foreshadowing, of the Church: Mary is, by Jesus’ EXPLICIT gift, our heavenly
mother; the Church is our spiritual mother on earth. As Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Church gives
birth to disciples of Jesus who are born from her proclamation of His Good News
or by birth from her womb -- the baptismal font -- by the power of the Holy
Spirit bequeathed to her by Jesus. Mary is praised in Scripture as ‘she who
believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled’ while
Mother Church ‘unfailingly adheres to the faith … delivered once for all to the
saints. We have to recognize this mystery
of the real oneness between Jesus and Mary, and also the spiritual oneness
between Mary and Mother Church; and we should learn from St. Luke to reverence
the Church as Elizabeth reverenced Mary; it is only the devil who works to
separate what God has joined.
Jesus has promised to be with His Church to the end of time;
He has given His Holy Spirit in fullness to His Church, to guide her into all
truth. When His disciples gather
together as Church, Jesus is infallibly in their midst; and He has promised
that He will defend her against the Devil’s attempts to destroy her. As we heard in the second reading that:
For this reason, when He came
into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body
You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the
scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”
The Son of God took a human body from Mary in order to do
His Father’s will on earth for our salvation; so, now in heaven seated at the
right hand of the Father, He still uses His body to continue His Father’s work:
not the glorified fleshly body -- which is, as I have said, at His Father’s
side in heavenly glory -- but His sacramental Body and Blood, in the mystical
Body of Mother Church, of which He is the Head.
Mother Church is greater than any individual, even greater
than Mary who is a member of the Church, and as such is of the Church, in the
Church, not above her. And so, we must reverence Mother Church given
to us for our salvation by the Lord Who is her Master and ours. He uses His Church, our earthly Christian-and-Catholic
Mother, to guide us and bless us; and He never allows the inherent human weakness
of her individual members to betray His divine Truth committed to her for
protection and proclamation for the salvation of mankind.
People of God learn from Elizabeth; she was, as the Gospel
tells us, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and the Holy Spirit led her to cry out:
And how does this happen to me
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Reverence and love, honour and delight in, Mary, now Queen of Heaven but ever our deeply-concerned Mother and multi-occasional (!) visitant; and in the same spirit pray and stand up for, trust in, Mother Church; not because of her earthly pomp, prestige or influence, but because she is the instrument Christ wills to use for our salvation and God’s greater glory; she is His Mystical Body, He is her Head, and His Spirit is her very life. Such is the purpose of God, dear friends in Christ, that, as loving and obedient children of her He has chosen to serve His purposes of salvation, His Spirit will fill our lives and form us ever more and more into the likeness of Him Who is to come, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is our present hope and will be our future reward.
