The Visitation

The Visitation

IN  THIS GOSPEL ACCOUNT, ALL IS hustle and bustle.

Mary “goes in all haste,” the greeting she addresses to Elizabeth, John the Baptist “leaped for joy in his mother’s womb,” Elizabeth’s proclamation concerning Mary and Mary’s song of thanksgiving – all these happenings are so many manifestations of the action of the Spirit which marks the beginning of the Messianic era. The Visitation event is not, therefore, just a transition scene, but one which marks a major step forward in the revelation of the Messiah who here, for the first time in Luke’s Gospel, is given the title of “LORD.”

1. The Effectiveness of God’s Word

The Visitation account, which Luke saw as being in close continuity with the two announcement stories, has as its first purpose to show how efficacious God’s Word is. The announcement to Zechariah, as well as that made to Mary, had as their object to announce that a woman was to become a mother in the near future.

This was the sign that Mary was to recognize when she went “in all haste” to Elizabeth, and it was also the event which Elizabeth celebrated when she welcomed the Mother of her Lord (1,43).

The Word of God here finds its fulfilment and this Elizabeth expressly recognizes when she proclaims the fundamental reason for Mary’s blessedness: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (1 ,45). Moreover, strictly on the level of what actually took place, the account shows how the word spoken to Zechariah with regard to John was carried out to the full: ” . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb” (1, 15).

2. John the Baptist’s Consecration as Prophet

This is the real culminating point of the first part of Luke’s account: the mere presence of the Messiah at the moment when Mary greeted Elizabeth is sufficient to provoke a reaction “of joy” in John. This reaction is specific to the messianic era and to the beginning of eschatological salvation (cf. Jn 8,56 and AP. 19, 7), and it expresses the exceptional bond between John and Jesus: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (Jn 3,29).

John also is invested with the spirit of prophecy: through the words pronounced by his mother, “filled with the Holy Spirit” (l ,41), it is John who is exercising his prophetic function (“and you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High ” 1, 76) by referring to Jesus as “Lord.”

3. Jesus, the object of a new Revelation

Again, it is on the mystery of Jesus that the whole weight of Luke’s account is brought to bear, as is shown by the solemnity with which he records Elizabeth’s words concerning Mary: Elizabeth is “filled with the Holy Spirit,” she “exclaimed with a loud cry” (just as was done in the liturgical acclamations.) It is equivalent to a profession of faith in the Lord’s presence: cf. I Ch 16, 4,5,42, and she makes use of the title “Lord” which will be the title ‘par excellence’ of the Risen Son of God (Acts 2,38, Jn 20,13, Ph 3,8).

Her twofold blessing, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” (l, 45) underlines the sanctity of the child Mary is carrying and is an echo of Gabriel’s predictions: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. (. . . ) the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God”.

4. Mary’s Blessedness . . . 

“Blessed is she who believed” (1,45). At one and the same time, Elizabeth reveals the mystery of Mary and the reason of her blessedness. The mystery of Mary consists in the unique bond by which her motherhood binds her to the fruit of her womb (1 ,42). To give the full meaning of what Elizabeth intended in her greeting, one would have to translate thus: “You are more blessed than all other women BECAUSE the fruit of your womb is blessed.”

It is the holiness of the Son which sheds its lustre on the Mother. More than this, it is the Son who is the cause of his Mother’s holiness. In the eyes of the Evangelists and of the early Christians, there would never be any fairer title than “the Mother of Jesus,” (cf. Jn 2, 1) “the Mother of my Lord.”

. . . comes from her Faith

But we are dealing here with a motherhood that was, before and above all else, accepted in faith. Mary is, first and foremost, a believer, a woman whose answer to the Word was totally affirmative and totally different from that of doubting Zechariah. It is this faith of Mary that Elizabeth is proclaiming when she says: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (1,45). For Luke, there is no opposition between Mary’s motherhood and her hearing of the Word, (cf. 11,27-28) on the contrary, he links them together.

5. Mary’s Thanksgiving

The Visitation scene carries over into Mary’s personal thanksgiving. the Magnificat. Mary recognizes the intervention of God, her Saviour, in this miraculous maternity which is fulfilled in her: “For he who is mighty has done great things for me” (1 ,49). But Mary’s eyes look beyond herself and take in the whole of Israel’s history, and her act of thanksgiving is permeated with the accents of the whole of her people, celebrating the great deeds of their God. This woman “blessed more than all others” (cf. Jdt 13, 18) does indeed belong fully to the history of Israel, to that long line of men and women who have experienced and sung the salvation that comes from God; and she, too, sings the God who is faithful to his Covenant, faithful to the Promise made to the Fathers (Magnificat).

6. Mary, . . . 

The analogy between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant is already adumbrated in the words the Angel addressed to her: Mary would be filled with the divine presence just as the Ark was filled with the glory of Yahweh. It is in the Visitation scene that this association is brought out most strongly: —while the people of Jerusalem were celebrating the return of the Ark (2 Sam. 6, 12), Elizabeth ‘exclaimed in a loud voice’ (this expression is always used in any liturgical context dealing with the Ark of the Covenant: see above) and the child leaped “for joy” in her womb.

—Elizabeth’s words concerning Mary, “and why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (1 ,41) recalls the words of David in the presence of the Ark: “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” (2 Sam. 6,9).

Mary’s coming to Elizabeth is a source of blessings, just as the coming of the ark was for the house of Obededom (2 S 6, 10).

—the phrase “for about three months” would confirm this link with 2 Sam. 6 since the ark of the covenant remained for three months at Obededom’s house.

. . . Ark of the Covenant

The validity of seeing a relation between these texts, first put forward by R. Laurentin (Structure et Théologie de Luc 1-2, pp. 79-81) has been recently played down and even contested (McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament. pp. 61-63; Brown, The Birth of the Messiah pp. 344-345).

If the interpretation proposed here is not beyond discussion, it is borne out in more than one place by the text itself, and the analogy it proposes is one of the most enlightening with regard to Mary’s part in the Visitation account. What the ark of the covenant could only mean – and mean on a purely local level – Mary has implemented personally. She is to God’s people an effective sign of his presence.