An audio file of today's gospel and blog can be accessed via this link.
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Today’s gospel (Luke 1: 39-56) tells us more about the Blessed Mother than almost any other part of Sacred Scripture. Bethlehem means in Hebrew ‘House of Bread’, but before Bethlehem, Mary was the House of the Bread who had come down from heaven following the Annunciation, Mary’s original joy. He is present in this gospel in mysterious and perfectly Eucharistic silence. Mary’s journey to the hill country of Judah in today’s gospel is, as it were, the first Eucharistic procession in history, and like the coming of the Eucharist, Mary’s arrival brings joy to Elizabeth and to John.
To Elizabeth first – for like her child, she too was filled
in this moment with the Holy Spirit. Some Christians appear to think of Mary as
a baby machine for the incarnation, but not Elizabeth who recognises Mary’s
blessing for what it is: the greatest dignity ever accorded any human being.
Mary’s holiness is crowned by her union and cooperation with God (Blessed
are those who hear the word of God and keep it), but her dignity and
holiness are rooted in her divine motherhood, for her preservation from sin was a gift that made possible her vocation. Hence, Elizabeth’s question: why
should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? When the
Litany of Loretto calls Mary cause of our joy, it is evoking this very
moment of encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, and proposing it as the sign
for our encounter with Mary, our mother and our model. If Mary is not the cause
of our joy, we have to question whether we have really understood what she
brings, for she brings this joy not just to Elizabeth but to succeeding generations
also…
Beginning with John of course, Jesus’ cousin - who would be known as
John the Baptist and who would lay down his life in defence of the sanctity of
marriage, the social symbol of the union of Jesus with His Church. Any woman
who has carried a child could tells us what it is like to be booted in the guts
by an unborn infant, but the commentators of the gospel have long seen this as
the moment in which John was himself filled with the Holy Spirit, like his
mother Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the wife of a priest, speaks from the depths of
the Old Testament, like Esther, Ruth, or perhaps more like Hannah, mother of
the prophet Samuel whose joy, like Mary’s, was to say: Here I am Lord: your
servant is listening – for obedience comes from the Latin obedire
which is to listen or pay attention. But the obedient John speaks here also, in the only way an unborn
child can speak, and in speaking thus, articulates the then silent cry of all
those future generations who would call Mary blessed later on.
And then in the
hearing of both Elizabeth and John, Mary’s hymn of joy unfolds, singing the
greatness of God, His condescension to her, her future glory, God’s mastery of
human affairs and history, and His faithfulness to those He promised mercy and
forgiveness. For Mary knew a kind of forgiveness or at least salvation, not for personal or
original sin but in a preventative sense, for she too needed a redeemer whose
merits would reach back to her own conception and exclude her from the effects
of the fall of Man.
Mary stayed with Elizabeth thereafter. May she stay with
every one of us, bring us joy today, and travel with us, no longer towards the
hills of the earthly Judah, but on our journey in this life towards the eternal
hills.
O Mary, teach us always to say ‘yes’ to the Lord every
moment of our lives.
O Mary, teach us always to give thanks to the Lord every
moment of our lives.
O Mary, teach us always to rejoice in the Lord every
moment of our lives.
O Mary, teach us always to love the Lord every moment of
our lives.
Amen.
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