The Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 19, 2021

Luke 1:39–45

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, “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.”

“Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah.”  She would have set out for Judah after receiving the message from Gabriel that she was to bear God’s Son, and after telling Joseph her husband the news.  It might well be that Joseph escorted her to the town of Ein Karem, where Mary’s relative Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah lived.  If so, Joseph would have returned to Nazareth upon seeing Mary safely to their home.  The journey would have not been an easy one, for about a hundred miles separated Nazareth and Ein Karem and in that part of Judah the road went alongside of rocky hills riddled with niches and caves in which thieves and rebels would hide.  Making this journey “in haste” or “with diligence” indicates how driven Mary was to help her relative in her own pregnancy and also to learn from the priest Zechariah something of what God expected from her in the coming months and years.

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb.”  Elizabeth’s own desire to do the will of God prepared both her and her unborn child to experience and receive the grace of Almighty God.  At this moment, the Church teaches, John the Baptist was freed from original sin so that he might be equipped even from his birth to prepare the world for the coming of its Maker.  The leaping of John the Baptist is also a sign of our reception of Holy Communion.  Our souls “leap” for joy and are filled with grace when we receive the Son of God in this Sacrament.  

“Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice.”  In the Old Testament, when it is said that someone cries out with “a loud voice” it is an expression of grief and lamentation.  In the new age of grace, those who love God cry out with rejoicing.  Elizabeth’s crying out is a sign of the rapture the saints feel upon entering heaven at the end of their lives on earth: if she was filled with joy in the presence of the Lord veiled within the womb of his holy Mother, how much greater shall be the exaltation of the saints when they see God face to face!  “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”  Elizabeth would have marveled for a few minutes after her son leapt in her womb, speechless in the presence of this mystery, and now she exclaims all that she can manage.  “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  Of all the titles bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin throughout the ages, the one which best describes who she is, is “Mother of God”.  Elizabeth’s cry also signifies how we should wonder at the unmerited gift of faith that we have received from Almighty God.  “For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.”  This saying brings to mind Psalm 114: “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea saw and fled: Jordan was turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like the lambs of the flock.”  This Psalm commemorates the liberation of Israel from Pharaoh and Egypt.  John’s leap for joy signifies our liberation from sin and death.

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  We stand in awe of the faith of the Blessed Virgin, a faith that enabled her to see God in all people and in all events.  Her faith, indeed, moves mountains as gazing upon it fills us with a burning desire to see God.