4thSunday of Advent, Year C - December 19th, 2021

Christmas is almost here! With the excitement of preparing for the upcoming solemnity, it can be easy to overlook these last days of Advent. However, if we take time to slow down and ponder the readings and prayers given to us by Holy Mother Church in the final week before Christmas, we will be richly rewarded and even better prepared to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord. This was certainly our experience as we shared our insights on the Scriptures for this Sunday!

Our main focus was on the beautiful Gospel account of the Visitation. Though this episode in the life of Jesus and Mary is very familiar to us as Catholics, a closer reading reveals far more depth than meets the eye. The Holy Spirit is powerfully active in this scene, as evidenced by the almost “explosive” series of events – Mary “hastening,” John “leaping,” Elizabeth “crying out.” As more than one Sister observed, the Third Person of the Trinity often likes to “stir things up” when He arrives on the scene! The Visitation is the sudden manifestation of the Spirit’s hidden work in the lives of Mary and Elizabeth, and the vibrant joy of this moment echoes down even to our own day.

One Sister was particularly touched by Elizabeth’s final words to Our Lady: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” The Virgin Mary is the personification and perfection of faithful Israel, an individual woman who embodies God’s beloved “Daughter Zion” in her most exalted holiness. With this in mind, Elizabeth’s praise is not only directed to Mary’s faith as an individual, but also to the steadfast faith of Israel throughout its long and painful history. The Advent liturgy, which gives us four weeks to hear and reflect on the prophecies of the Messiah, is meant to give us a taste of the waiting and longing that God’s chosen people experienced in the long centuries before the coming of Christ. We can only stand in awe of the faith that sustained Israel throughout that time, even when all hope seemed to be lost after the Babylonian Exile. Are we as steadfast in holding to God’s promises – whether in Scripture or in our own personal experience of Him? Are we willing to stand on His word when challenges arise, fighting the lethargy that can set in with lack of hope?

Another Sister drew out a powerful spiritual sense of this Gospel reading, comparing Elizabeth’s relationship with the unborn John the Baptist to the spiritual mother’s relationship with her spiritual children. The Holy Spirit comes to the Precursor not directly, but through the agency of his mother: “When the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.” Simply by her openness to the grace of God, Elizabeth became a channel of grace for her child. In just the same way, our receptivity to God’s Word in our lives can have profound effects on those whom God has entrusted to our prayers. He does not usually ask for grand or impressive actions on our part – rather, He delights in using astonishingly simple means to convey incredible grace!

Finally, we discussed a seldom-pondered element of the Visitation story: its effect on poor mute Zechariah. The Gospel does not mention the doubting priest in this context, but it must certainly have been a profound grace for him to have the Mother of God in his home for three months. Though Zechariah’s disbelief had already been confounded by the miraculous pregnancy of his wife, one Sister suggested that he may have continued to harbor feelings of guilt and discouragement over his own poor response to the angel’s announcement. After all, wouldn’t any one of us feel similarly in such a situation? In this context, the joy of the Holy Spirit that come flooding into the household with Mary’s arrival must have surely been a healing grace for Zechariah. Perhaps these months of silently contemplating the mysterious workings of God were what prepared him to sing his glorious hymn (the Benedictus) after John’s circumcision. Furthermore, it must have been profoundly meaningful for him as a Levitical priest to be housing and ministering to the Lord Himself, Who was hidden in the womb of Mary!