The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Wednesday 31, 2023

Luke 1, 39-56

Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 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? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

This Feast, celebrating the Virgin Mary’s stay with her relative Elizabeth during the latter’s pregnancy, made more difficult by her advanced age.  Mary herself was with child at the time with the Son of God.  The Franciscans first celebrated this Feast in the late 1200’s and it spread through their influence to various dioceses, though celebrated on different days.  In 1389, Pope Urban VI decreed that this Feast be kept by the whole Church.  He hoped by this for the Church to obtain the graces necessary to end what became known as the Great Western Schism, which lasted from 1378 to 1417, a period which at one time saw three men claiming the papal throne.  The Schism began when the Roman crowd, fearing yet another French pope who would prefer to live in southern France, demonstrated vigorously during the conclave that elected Urban VI.  Following the conclave and the coronation, a reaction set in among the cardinals, especially those from France, and they decided that the election of Urban was not valid because they had felt coerced by the crowd.  The French cardinals then elected a French cleric who took the name Clement VII, leading to Urban VI and the anti-pope Clement excommunicating each other.  Subsequent attempts to fix this mess backfired so that for a few years three men claimed to be pope.  After years of exhausting turmoil, the electors present at the Council of Constance deposed two of the three claimants and received the resignation of another.  They then elected to the papacy a bishop who took the name Martin V.

“Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah.”  St. Luke does not say that Mary set out immediately after she received the message of the Angel Gabriel, but that once she did set out, she traveled “in haste” or “with diligence”.  It would seem that following the Annunciation she told her spouse, St. Joseph, what had happened, and that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit (in his dream while Mary was away, the angel confirms what Mary had told him, saying that “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1, 20).  She would also have waited for a caravan to head in the direction of Elizabeth’s house.  It is possible that a relative traveled with her, for women did not travel alone in that time and place.  From deep within Galilee, she would have traveled into Judea.  The country there featured rocky hills and gullies.  Very picturesque, but tiring to cover on foot.  The town where Elizabeth lived was situated a few miles from Jerusalem.  “Where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”  Many artistic depictions of the Visitation show it as taking place  outside the house, but Luke clearly informs us that Mary greeted Elizabeth inside of it.  Elizabeth did not break her withdrawal from society until her baby was born.  

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb.”  Mary always saw herself as the Handmaid of the Lord and habitually looked for ways to serve.  At the indication of Elizabeth’s pregnancy by the angel, Mary saw her place as at her relative’s side and so she went to her, not thinking of herself and of her much more consequential pregnancy.  When Elizabeth’s child leaped in her womb, though, Elizabeth knew, through the Holy Spirit, that Mary was the one to be honored and served.  Right away, she acknowledged Mary as set over her: “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?”  Mary, we should note, does not answer this question for she is still transfixed that the Almighty God had chosen her to conceive and bear his Son.

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  Probably the exchange between the women recorded by St. Luke was filled with pauses and silences as the two women, whose wombs contained mysteries, looked upon each other in recognition and joy.  Elizabeth would have paused after her question before uttering this blessing.  Her words were unintentionally ironic, for her husband, the priest of the Lord, had not believed the words of Gabriel to him in the Temple, but here this young woman believed something far more demanding and tremendous than what Zechariah had failed at.  Luke shows by this the limits to which the Jewish priesthood could go in terms of faith.on the brink of the Messianic Age, it falters, and with the tearing of the high priest’s garments (cf. Matthew 26, 65) it ends.  As if to demonstrate this, John the Baptist does not take up the service in the Temple as a priest, the son of a priest.  Instead, he goes off to the wilderness and prepares the way for the true High Priest, whose sandal strap he did not dare to unfasten.

In the Virgin Mary’s Visitation we see how utterly Mary sought to serve even to denigrating herself.  Her soul always magnified the Lord and her spirit always rejoiced in God her Savior, and for this reason was glad to serve him in any way she could.