Today we celebrate the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth. A couple of years back when I visited the Holy Land, we went to the old town of Ein Karem. This is believed to be the town where Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, lived. It is the town where Mary came to visit. It is in hilly country, and the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth is way up a hill. Below the hill is a well where Mary is believed to have gone to fetch water for home use.
The visitation of Mary to Elizabeth did not come easy. She was heavy with the child Jesus, and the distance between Nazareth and Ein Karem is not short. In a time when there were no trains or buses, it required of her quite an effort to go visit Elizabeth in a time of need.
The story of the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth is one packed with a lot of meaning. There is meaning in the gesture itself, and there is also meaning in the encounter.
Mary visiting Elizabeth was a powerful sign of love and care for Elizabeth. There are times when we are weak and can do with some support from family and friends. Sometimes that comes through, other times it doesn’t. It takes a special sensibility for one to notice the needs of others and respond to them in appropriate ways that offer support and care. We are increasingly becoming individualistic and self-centered so that noticing the needs of others does not come naturally. Mary shows us a good example of having an eye for the needs of others and responding to their needs in appropriate ways. Let us look around us in our families and communities for those hurting or who need help in some way and make an effort to attend to their needs just the way Mary did in the case of Elizabeth.
Many years ago, I fell sick and needed minor surgery at a time when I was approaching my final graduate school exams. It appeared as if my world was falling apart around me. I was distressed. However, two classmates came to visit with me, and one of my professors gave me a phone call to check on how I was doing. Those two simple visits meant a lot to me. I knew I was not alone through my situation. I knew I would pull through, and my studies would be fine. The visitation of Mary can be performed in many ways; an email, a phone call, a text message, or stopping by can go a long way to communicate to others that we are there for them.
Second, the gesture of Mary’s visitation was not merely a casual family visitation. It was a missionary journey. Mary was heavy with the child Jesus and traveled across the country under difficult circumstances to take Jesus, who was in her womb, to Elizabeth and her family. That is what missionaries do - take Jesus to others, sometimes under difficult circumstances. We live in a time when we need to renew our missionary spirit. We have become so complacent and minimalist in our missionary efforts that churches are closing, fewer people are coming to church, and fewer people are hearing about the redemptive love of God for them. Given what we currently observe around us, there is in an urgent need for Jesus. Communities, families, workplaces, popular culture, and the digital world need evangelization. There is a missionary urgency in our time that we need to wake up to. This is not an easy journey to commit to, but we need to take after Mary and make the journey to take the Lord to others.
May we ask Our Blessed Mother, the Queen of the Apostles, to pray for us for the grace we need to notice the needs of others and respond to them; and may we also ask God for the grace to renew our missionary spirit. Amen.
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