Friday of the Third Week of Advent, 2018

In Rumer Godden’s novel about an English Benedictine abbey, In This House of Brede, the abbess ponders the story contained in today’s Gospel. “Why…did theologians always teach—and we take it for granted—that Mary went simply to [help] Elizabeth?... Could it not also have been that she needed the wisdom and strength of an older woman?” I think this is an important insight to consider. We know intellectually that just as Jesus was like us in all things except sin, so Mary his mother was preserved from the taint of original sin. Yet it is easier for me to think of Jesus living an ordinary life—first as a carpenter and then as an itinerant preacher—than Mary. Somehow, I want to keep Mary up on her pedestal, untouched by the messiness of daily life.

But this is not the way Mary lived. She was a teenage girl who found herself in a completely unique situation: she was to become the Mother of God. The obvious thing is to take Gabriel’s news about Elizabeth to heart and go to see her. Elizabeth will understand. And Elizabeth, who also finds herself in a place she never expected to be—pregnant in her old age—recognizes her young cousin’s destiny without being told. Again, we remind ourselves: Mary was truly human. We know from other texts in the Gospels that she had normal emotional reactions to the various situations in her life. I imagine her being both excited and apprehensive, filled with joy but also a little anxious about what the future might hold as she travels to her cousin’s village. Elizabeth’s greeting must have reassured Mary, given her new courage. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she cries out, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” It is true; it was not a dream. And Elizabeth confirms, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”