A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. This is a continuation of yesterday's reading. Mary set out, proceeding in haste into the hill country to a town of Judah where she entered Zacharias' house and greeted her cousin Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby stirred in her womb. 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 stirred in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who trusted that the Lord's words to her would be fulfilled. And this is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Now you will remember yesterday was the Annunciation. When at the end of it, the angel told Mary that her cousin Elizabeth, even though she was sterile and even well beyond the childbearing age, was pregnant and in her fifth month. That's where we left the story yesterday. Today's reading picks it up right there, and we have Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Now that is a pretty good walk.
The Annunciation took place up in Nazareth. Elizabeth is down in the hill country, the more or less near Jerusalem, in Judea. It's still a pretty good journey, even by automobile. And we're told that Mary left immediately to go to her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judah. Why did she go?
Now, there is not the slightest hint in yesterday's reading that our blessed lady left to visit her cousin in order to prove the truth of the message that came to her from this wondrous messenger. There's not a hint of that there. Mary didn't ask for any proofs in that reading from Saint Luke yesterday. But I tried to emphasize that even though she didn't, they were given to her. That the angel before he departed, or this heavenly messenger, whatever it was, before the interview is over, tells Mary about her cousin.
And then Mary has already consented to doing what she sees to be the will of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And now she comes to her cousin Elizabeth, undertaking this very, very strenuous strenuous journey, apparently alone. Apparently, I say, there's no indication that she had anybody with her. That would be a very difficult, hazardous journey today, even in an automobile, as conditions are on the West Bank. All of this has taken place on the West Bank.
Why did she do it? Well, the obvious answer, and sometimes we so often miss the obvious, is she did it out of benevolence, out of a kindly spirit. That here her cousin, an old woman, is pregnant and needs help. And so she undertakes the journey to be with her cousin on this great occasion. Now as you all know, there is, as I've said, and keep it in mind, a great deal of controversy about these texts of Saint Luke.
Just what do they mean, who said what, how did it take place, and so forth. But let us not lose substance for the shadow. Let us not lose the reality because of details. Mary definitely was not taking or did not carry a tape recorder. There wasn't a secretary along taking shorthand.
That we could be sure of. So that these words put into Elizabeth's mouth and later the Magnificat put into Mary's mouth, how did they originate? I don't know. It was could something like this have taken place? Of course it could.
I mean, even the words. Because as I say today, we underrate, grossly underrate, the power of memory that people used to have. Just to give you a little example, I saw in Oxford, in the Bodleian Library, the complete poem of Virgil's Aeneid, the complete poem of Virgil's Aeneid. And all had was the first letter of each word of that epic. The reader was supposed to fill in all the words with just having that first initial letter.
Think of that as trick of memory. So and furthermore, these people then and now have a tremendous hold on tradition. By that I mean that things are passed down by word-of-mouth. Not within the last few months, there was a law a series of articles on the Sinai Peninsula. And the traveler who wrote these articles made a point of this, that so much of the tradition of the Bedouins was in word-of-mouth that unless it was recorded now, it would be lost forever.
His companion was a scholar who was interested in this and was taking down on tape these traditions going back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, passed down from father to son, word-of-mouth, nothing written. And so today, we grossly underrate the power, the utility, the actuality that many people had and many people still have of keeping the spoken word and passing it down as a spoken word. With our great love of scholarship, you know, we have the attitude that if it isn't in print, it doesn't count. And so leaving but keeping this in mind, but leaving aside the details, you can't miss the main thrust of these texts. That here is something tremendous happened in Nazareth.
And it was so impressive to Mary that she takes off on this long hazardous journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth. You can't escape that. And here she finds Elizabeth about to become a mother. It's that simple. And here we have the first manifestation of recognition of who Mary was, and an explanation of Mary's importance.
Because even here in the first this is the first instance we have of Mary's public appearance after the annunciation. What do we have? A manifestation of the power, not of Mary, but of her child. Of her child. Everything that Mary is is because of Jesus.
And so in this instance, when Mary comes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth says that when at your salutation, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. At Mary's presence? No. But because of him who at that moment was present in her body. She was the tabernacle of God.
In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit. Amen.