A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Mary set out no. She's up in Nazareth up by the lake country. Mary set out going south down to Ayn Karim, proceeding in haste into the hill country to a town of Judah, where she entered Zacharias' house and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby in her womb stirred, And Elizabeth was filled with the holy spirit and cried out in a loud voice, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
But who am I that the mother of my lord should come to me? The moment that your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby in my womb stirred for joy. Blessed is she who trusted that the lord's word to her, that's the annunciation, would be fulfilled. And then Mary said, this is the great Magnificat. My being proclaims that look how weak that is in English, where the Latin is.
Isn't that glorious? My being pro and notice the pronoun. We begin with little old me, personal pronoun. My being proclaims the greatness of the lord. My spirit finds joy in god, my savior.
For he has looked upon his servant in her lowliness. All ages to come shall call me blessed. God, who is mighty, has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is from age to age on those who fear him. He has shown might with his arm.
He has confused the proud in their most secret thoughts. He has deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised up the lowly to high places. The hungry has given every good thing, while the rich, he has sent away empty. He has upheld Israel, his servant, ever mindful of his mercy, even as he promised to our fathers, promised Abraham and his descendants forever. That's the end of the.
Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home back up to Nazareth. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, whenever we come to this feast, I always I I recall very vividly my visit to this to Ayn Karim. Now this is a was a small town about it's less than less than seven miles from Jerusalem.
To be precise, seven kilometers, that's going by the road. And remember, Jeru where that would be about a 175 miles or more, depending on your road, from this the town of Ayn Karim down near Jerusalem and going up to Nazareth. That's at least a 175 miles. We had lunch in Nazareth, and we had dinner in Jerusalem. And we came down there hell splitting in one of these extended Mercedes.
Now there's so many Ayn Karim used to be a very beautiful little town. What I saw, it was desolate because in 1948, the Israelis kicked out the Christians and, of course, the Palestinians and took it over. And when I saw it, it was a just a waste. The vineyards and the olive trees were going to pot. So that's the way it is today, but the church is there.
It's a magnificent church. It's relatively recent with a crypt and the up and the upper church. And as you go into the there's a courtyard, and then I should call it an arcade. And then on either side, you have the in over 40 languages. You can take your pick.
Now there are many ways of looking at this visitation. We do not know I mean, that Saint Luke does not tell us why Mary traipse ed down to her cousin or to her relative, Elizabeth. We're only told she did it. And far be it from me to put motivations on anybody. Anybody.
Many times, I don't even know my own. But you have to go back to the annunciation, and you have to get you see, we this stuff is so ordinary to us that it becomes trite. It becomes trite. Only yesterday, I had occasion to talk to a young man who was baptized, Catholic, but sort of lost his faith or whatever you wanna call it, and we were talking about the Eucharist. And when I told him that we believe that I mean, a good authentic Catholic believes, that doesn't mean they all do, but that is the the what the holy Roman Catholic church teaches, is that in the under the appearance of bread and wine, you have the the presence of our lord Jesus Christ, body, soul, and divinity.
And he said, do all the people who come to mass on Sunday believe that? Alright. I think I'll stop right there. You see, if things now there's not this is human. This is human.
That things that we we live with, that we are associated with become ordinary, become routine. We cease to think about it. Barry has a play on that. But and so in this matter of our blessed mother and the annunciation, we ought to try to see it with new eyes because the visitation has meaning only in regard to the annunciation. Here you have a little Jewish girl who has some kind of an experience.
I don't know what an angel looks like. I don't know how they recognized him. But we're told an angel comes. I don't know what it means. Take your pick.
And they and but there's a there's an interchange of of of conversation. Notice I didn't say say dialogue. And in that interchange, the this spirit or whatever it is, an angel tells Mary, you are going to be the mother of god. You're going to bear his son. And this naive girl says, look.
I'm not even married. I don't have a husband. And then the angel responds, the holy spirit will descend upon you and the child born of you, what we call this and that. Then it goes on. Now note, Mary doesn't say, how am I going to believe you?
Why should I believe you? What are what are the motives of credibility? What Mary says is, be it done to me according to your word. But then what happens? This is what intrigues me like all get out.
Here we have this little girl, but what does she do? She puts on her sandals, throws a shawl over her shoulders, gets some water and wine and cheese and stuff, and gets her walking staff, and starts south less something less than 200 miles to visit her relative. Who notice. The angel says, she who was notice this very carefully. She who was sterile all her life, who is now in her old age, is pregnant.
Jewish girls knew where babies come from. They knew what sterility was. It was the worst thing that happened to a Jewish woman not to have her become a mother. Today, it's just the reverse. And look, then the angel says, your cousin Elizabeth is pregnant.
A sterile woman, way beyond the menopause, is pregnant. And what does Mary do? She goes down to her cousin Elizabeth. Now that's what the text says. Why did she go?
Well, take your pick. I like to think this dear little girl, our blessed mother, says, I'll I'll see for myself. I'll see whether this message is true or false. I don't know whether this My I'm as I can have a guess as well as anybody. I love to think.
But whether she said that or thought that and that that was the reason for her going, I don't know. But she went, and she found her relative Elizabeth just as that spirit had told her. Here is a old woman, a woman who was publicly known to be sterile her whole life, and here she is well on into pregnancy. You talk about her motive of credibility. Can you match it?
Now she stays with her cousin and then goes and then she remember, she either she very likely walked, and at best she had a a donkey. At best. Now you try walking a 175 miles. Or even with a donkey that didn't have air conditioned saddles, you know. This I I love this story.
It is so down to earth. It is so good. It is so profound. And let me tell you, sophisticated. Sophisticated.
I don't know whether Mary knew anything about Aristotelian logic. I don't know whether she even knew in Arabic or whatever language she used. It wasn't Greek, and it certainly wasn't Latin. And let me assure you, as some people seem to think, it was not English. That's one thing I'm pretty darn sure of.
That this naive Jewish maiden of little education, but she was literate. All Jews were literate, had to read the law. How she did this, she may not know a thing about credibility or about the validity of testimony and and the the trustworthiness of witnesses and all that, but she acted with the utmost intelligence. That I'm absolutely sure of by her actions. I don't know what was going on in her brain.
I'm I don't do that. I'm not a psycho historian. And so this this feast of the visitation is tremendous in my estimation. You don't have to have been there. Who who who notice, we're not told in the gospel that it was Ayin Karim, but there there's a tremendously long tradition that that was the place.
And it had to be close to Jerusalem because Zacharias was a priest who had to give service to Jerusalem in the temple. You know, that's where this whole thing starts. And so today, as we pay honor to our blessed mother, think of her what she was a young Jewish girl, just as human as any one of us in this church this morning in Garrett Park, who wasn't the sparkle in anybody's eye when this all happened. Let me tell you. It's another thing I'm perfectly sure of.
Let us rejoice because remember that as Flannery O'Connor has, so a good man's hard to find. The misfit says that when God became man in Christ, these are not the exact words, everything was changed. And his mother was Mary. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.