The Visitation of Mary: Its Effects

Today we celebrate the Visitation of Mary, who following the Angel’s announcement that she has been chosen to be the Mother of the Savior, leaves, in haste to visit her elderly cousin,  whom she learns from the angel is also pregnant and is in her sixth month.   All is part of God’s plan to bring about the salvation of the world. God is coming to earth, becoming a human being in Mary’s womb, in  order to make holy what was made unholy by our first parents’ disobedience to God original plan for humankind.  His Plan B would not be thwarted by pride and covetousness of divine nature, of humankind wanting to be God!  Reconciliation between humanity and God would be accomplished through the Son of God showing God’s absolute love in the giving His life for our redemption.  The price of our ransom from Satan’s snares, from sin,  would be paid by the unblemished Lamb of God pouring out His blood for us once and for all upon the cross—an accomplishment of purification that no animal sacrifice, as in the Old Testament or any human being  could have accomplished. Only a member of the Trinity could reconcile us to God.

Mary, conceived without sin, carries Jesus, the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe, in her virginal womb to  visit Elizabeth.  John leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greets her elderly pregnant cousin.  John, in his mother’s womb, is baptized with the Holy Spirit and freed from all sin by  Jesus in His mother’s  womb. What a visit!  What a sacred moment!

You and I also carry God in the core of our bodies. We, too, have the same power of God within us. When you and I visit or encounter others, are we aware of the power God has given us to transform each other, as John and Jesus did, as Mary and Elizabeth did?  Or is our ability to make holy that which is and can be negatively affected by sin paled by our own lack of faith?  Mary believed! What you and I?