“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” In what days? And who are these people?
The appointed reading for today has dumped us unceremoniously into the middle of a lengthy narrative in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. The days, Luke tells us, are those of King Herod of Judea. Zechariah is a priest, married to Elizabeth; both are getting on in years, and they are childless, a source of deep embarrassment in that society. I should say, they have been childless, for it is clear that Elizabeth is now pregnant. Her young relative Mary is a virgin engaged to be married to Joseph, who doesn’t get a speaking part in Luke’s story. Elizabeth refers to Mary as a mother; in fact, Mary, too, is pregnant with her first child, and quite recently so. She remains a virgin, though; Luke quotes her as saying that she has no knowledge of man.
Oh, there’s another significant character in the story so far. He’s an angel named Gabriel.
Gabriel has made two appearances. The first was to Zechariah while the latter was busy with his priestly service. Gabriel told Zechariah that Elizabeth would fall pregnant and give birth to a son, who will prepare the people for the coming of their Lord and Saviour, and who is to be named John. Zechariah expresses some scepticism – about the pregnancy rather than the name – and is rewarded by being struck dumb for the duration of the pregnancy. Angels can do that, it seems. We met John the Baptist in full prophetic flow as an adult during the second and third Sundays of Advent.
Gabriel’s second appearance was during the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, when he told Mary that she was to fall pregnant with the Son of God, who will come into the world to save his people, and who is to be named Jesus. During the first Sunday of Advent, we heard Jesus the Christ as an adult towards the end of his earthly ministry, preparing his disciples for challenging years to come.
The gospel passage we read together opens just after Gabriel leaves Mary, having made his startling announcement. Gabriel had also told Mary about her older relative Elizabeth’s unlikely pregnancy. Mary’s instinct is to go as quickly as she can to be with Elizabeth.
Both of these women have discovered that they are not only seen and loved by God, but that they each in their way have been blessed to be a blessing by being given significant roles in the very middle of God’s unfolding work of salvation for all people. They begin by blessing each other as they spend time in each other’s presence together with their remarkable unborn children.
Mary’s greeting produces a strong response from Elizabeth, who recognizes through the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in her own body that God is present in Mary in a new way. When Elizabeth expresses this insight, it releases a torrent of praise from Mary, a revolutionary song that has come to be known as the Magnificat, one of the principal canticles of the Church.
The prophet Micah told of the coming of an ancient one into a humble earthly context, one of peace who would provide for his people in the strength of God to enable them to live secure. The author of Hebrews says that when Jesus the Christ came into the world, he entered a body that had been prepared for him, in order that he might do God’s will, which is to make his people holy through the offering of that body.
According to the founder of our Order, holiness is the brightness of divine love. Elizabeth and Mary were pregnant with God’s love, a love which brought them joy and delight, and which love they helped one another to release into the world. In what ways might we be pregnant with God’s love – spiritually if not physically – and how might we help one another to recognize the gift of that love within us and to release it into our world, finding ways to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things?
Elizabeth’s body had grown old, but she was not barren. She had life within her that called out to the life within young Mary, confirming for Mary the gift of God that she had received. What are the ways in which the older among us might share what they know of the life and love of God to support and encourage the vital energy of the younger in their passion to share their experience of that life and love with the world?