The Visitation.

The Visitation.

The rosary has this way of ever so gently pulling us into the mysteries of Christ and His Mother.  And while on many days my rosary is said with a combination of distracted Hail Mary’s and forgotten mysteries, there are other days that the Lord blesses it with grace and teaches me to reflect on the deep beauty and profundity of His very hidden, very simple, very glorious life.

The other day I was drawn to consider the beauty of that moment in which Our Lady met Elizabeth in a little town in Judah, that moment when John the Baptist leapt in the womb of Elizabeth, simultaneously drawing her attention to the Presence of the Lord within our Lady and filling her with the Holy Spirit.  Isn’t it miraculous how attentiveness to the presence of God allows us to be filled with the Holy Spirit?  How a moment spent in contemplation of His Beauty can lead our hearts to a place of grace and contemplation, a place of proclamation, a place of exclamation of the great glory of God?

Is that not what happens in this deep mystery?  That Mary greets Elizabeth, and suddenly both are led to exclaim the faithfulness of the Almighty?

I find it so deep, so miraculous.  Because I think about the people that God has brought to me, people to teach me how to exclaim of the great faithfulness of God.  I think about all the little moments I have spent praying, begging, the Lord for a sign of his faithfulness, hoping that the tears cried would be gathered up in some vial like the Psalm promises. And I think about how the Lord is mysteriously faithful to these prayers and outpourings, how in unexpected ways and places and times, he brings us what we need to exclaim of His Great Faithfulness.

And it is some mystery.  Because later on the story of the Visitation reminds us that Mary dwells there with Elizabeth for 3 months.  The presence of God tabernacles among men, among this little old couple in Judah who have miraculously conceived a child who would prophesy the Presence of the Lamb of God.  And this is the first place God goes, through the faithful obedience of our Lady, the Virgin from Nazareth.  

Our Lady, the new Ark of the Covenant, holds within herself the very covenant of God, the very promise of Presence, the promise of all promises.  

It is as if, in the growing womb of Our Lady, God is breathing newness.  You are not alone, the faithfulness of God has come to this place and is taking up residence in the monotony of your day to day.  The King of Heaven has set up his tent here, and in the most unexpectedly expected way, God has come to meet His people.  In despair, in poverty, in hopelessness, in monotony, in ordinariness, God has come to meet His people.  God has visited His people.

Remarkably extraordinary, in the midst of the utter ordinary, and isn’t it just like Him, to make it that way?

I suppose it is a call to true attentiveness, for even in the smallest and unexpected ways, God can reveal Himself profoundly.