This weekend (May 31) the Church remembers the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, mother of our Lord, to Elizabeth and Zechariah. This takes place between the Feast Day of the Annunciation (March 25th) and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24th).
God used Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who was advanced in years and had been barren, to be a beautiful and worthy vessel for the man who would become the forerunner of the Messiah, fulfilling Isaiah’s words: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way up for the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3).
The word of promise spoken to Zechariah by the Angel Gabriel was that his prayers had been heard and that his wife would bear a son called John. This would personally bring him joy and gladness, as well as many who would rejoice at his birth and come to their God through him (Lk. 1:14-16). Upon returning home from being in the temple, mute Zechariah’s wife conceived. Like her cousin Mary, she treasured these things in her heart and for five months “kept herself hidden, saying, ‘Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people’” (Lk. 1:25). In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy Gabriel visited Mary, betrothed, but yet to be married, with the news that she would bear a son named Jesus, the Son of God. Luke’s Gospel account then records that the Holy Spirit guided Mary to go quickly to Judah and visit Zechariah and Elizabeth.
When these two expectant mothers saw each other and Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, her baby leaped in her womb with joy (Lk. 1:41). The words of praise that follow from these women would continue to be remembered by the church worldwide, both in Elizabeth saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk. 1:42) and in Mary’s Magnificat (1:46-56). Mary’s song of praise for what God had done on her behalf eloquently proclaims the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ for us all, that through the incarnation, God in Christ noticed the humble, fed the hungry, helped his people, and remembered his merciful character. What had been done in the garden by the coming of sin had begun to be reversed through the mighty arm of God. He had seen the affliction of his people, from the bondage of sin to the captivity in Egypt and their continued suffering and oppression. Christ in the Kingdom of God came to reverse the order of the upside down world, where evil triumphed and sin wreaked havoc and destruction. God saw and acted, and like Mary and Elizabeth, how can we help but pour out praise? This same good news was for the lowly and the barren, and remains just as true for us today, church. This moment in history, recorded in Scripture, was pregnant with praise and promise for us as God’s people just as it was for the lowly yet obedient Virgin Mary, the mute and humbled faithful priest Zechariah, the once barren but then beholded by God Elizabeth, and the 6 months-in-the-womb John the Baptist.
Collect (Prayer) of the Day
Almighty God, by whose grace Elizabeth rejoiced with the blessed Virgin Mary and greeted her as the mother of the Lord: Look with favor on your lowly servants, that, with Mary, we may magnify your holy Name and rejoice to acclaim her Son as our Savior; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (taken from the Book of Common Prayer, 2019).
Bible Reading
Luke 1:39-45 (ESV)
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Photo Credit: “Visitation” by Domenico Ghirlandio
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