“Blessed are you who believe
what the word spoken to you will be fulfilled.”
This passage we hear today is most often referred to as
The Visitation of Mary and
is one of the more popular biblical scenes painted.
We have all seen countless images of Mary visiting Elizabeth.
Do you know in all those you have seen,
can you remember even one of those
that shows the two women to be pregnant?
It is not very common, is it?
Ever wonder why?
Yet them being pregnant is the very human condition that they are in
and it cannot be overlooked even for art!
They are both very pregnant, if there is such a thing.
Elizabeth would be quite far along in her pregnancy for sure.
For me this detail is important to understand their very humanness. Sometimes, art work can overly spiritualize a scene
and we forget about the more concretely human reality that is taking place.
Let me paint a slightly different picture,
not that I am an artist or anything,
but I would like to paint you a slightly different picture:
Mary is pregnant and we believe she was only 16 years old.
So she is way too young to be pregnant.
And Elizabeth is elderly and is way too old to be pregnant.
They both had two different struggles going on but the same question.
Like why now, Lord?
And yet, there is a joy that comes with being pregnant.
Yes, I’m going to be giving life
but there is this tension between the two different women.
The reality is that where Elizabeth lived and where Mary lived,
the journey would have been through the hill country.
To get there, Mary would have had to trek quite a bit of a distance.
She must have been quite troubled, if you would,
to have made that trek and quite determined and strong.
I suspect that Mary was going to visit Elizabeth
because she may be one of the only people around
who would have understood the predicament;
something awesome was happening
but it was difficult to understand.
This confusion can be true for a lot of us.
Sometimes there are things that happen in our lives
that are difficult to understand.
We do not understand why God allows certain things to happen.
And why does God have to do it this way, whatever this way is.
Mary and Elizabeth give us a key as to how to handle this.
It is important to break this open because many of us
struggle with confusion about how God works.
Even in the pre-pandemic world,
we were struggling with how God works. Right?
Now post-pandemic and we are not even post-pandemic,
we are still in the middle of a pandemic,
which seems to keep going on and on
and we wonder where is God in the midst of all of us.
Then we look to our leaders and there seems to be rancor on both sides.
It just seems to be endless.
And even inside the Church,
there is this constant battle inside even among the Bishops.
And you say “Like really?
Is there no direction.
Is there no clarity we can get to what we ought to be doing?”
Again, we should go to scripture today because it can help us.
For my own part as you know,
this has been a difficult last several weeks for me
with losing my brother to pancreatic cancer and my spiritual director.
But having journeyed with my brother over these last six months,
I will say this
and I said this at my brother’s funeral last Sunday.
I understand God less.
I understand God less now than I did six months ago
but I know him more and better.
I have experienced his love more
but still understand God less.
The older I get, I suppose, the more that becomes true.
I understand God less and less as life goes on
but I fall in love with God more and more.
Understanding doesn’t become as important
as experiencing his love,
experiencing God’s closeness.
That is my lesson over these last few months.
Mary and Elizabeth give us a great example to follow.
They hold on.
They hold on to faith.
They hold on to believing.
When they do not understand, they hold on.
And what do they hold onto?
They hold onto hope;
that they know there will be something here
that I will do the Lord’s Will even though I do not understand it.
And it is the beautiful yes of Mary to the message of the angel.
A simple yes clearly not possible for her
to have understood what was going to happen but she held on.
Fundamentally, the Visitation gives us one thing
that she holds onto the most; and that is love.
She holds onto the love of her cousin.
And she goes to her knowing she is in a similar state
and so what do we do in times of crisis?
We hold on.
We hold onto faith.
We hold onto hope.
And we hold onto love.
And we bind ourselves closer to those we love.
And we allow them to love us
especially when we are hurting and broken and wounded.
That is the ultimate message of Christmas:
God with us, Emmanuel,
the God who comes to save us, Jesus Christ.
Through this last week, there are a lot of things coming at us.
For some of you, like me,
Christmas will be a little harder
because we have lost a loved one.
But for many of you, Christmas is going to be
just another pandemic Christmas,
which is frustrating in its own right
but it has all the confusion;
and all the grace; and all the struggle.
It is all there together.
And the joy is right in the midst of all of it.
And how do we hold onto the joy of Christmas?
We hold onto love.
We bind closer to those who are around us
whether it be our child or our parent;
or a sibling; or a friend; or a neighbor.
Communicate that love to them
and allow them to communicate that love to us
because in the end what matters most is what do we hold onto.
Faith. Hope. And love.
The greatest of these is love.
That will get us through all dark times.
Let’s hold onto love.
“Blessed are you who believe
what the word spoken to you will be fulfilled.”
