Love shares itself, joy spreads itself. You can’t hide either. This is the meaning of Mary’s visit to her cousin, Elizabeth.
All women need confidantes, whether to cry together in sorrow, or to giggle with in joy. The visitation describes the sharing of two women who don’t quite know what is happening to them, but realize that whatever it is, it’s just too good!
Both women have been graced in different ways: The older Elizabeth, barren for so long, is now in the sixth month of a miraculous pregnancy. Mary, a virginal young woman, has experienced a mysterious impregnation, which fills her with happiness, not apprehension.
“God has blessed you above all women,” cries Elizabeth, “I tell you, when your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy!” And Mary, elated, shouts out, “Rejoice, rejoice, my spirit, in God my saviour !”
They can’t keep quiet anymore. Their lives have been changed, and the whole world has got to know.
This then is the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming one of us. God’s chooses ordinary men and women — people with longings left unfulfilled, people with liabilities, people not in control of their lives, people with a past.
Out of such human clay, God fashions something wonderful. And it’s this wonder which spreads, bringing happiness, confidence, daring, acceptance, transforming lives and creating new relationships. Not old relationships of power and bondage, of deceit and strife, but something completely new –
Who would have thought that an elderly woman and a teenage girl from an obscure village would get pregnant, and that their pregnancies would change the world?
Who would have thought that the seed sowed in a field would grow bigger than any garden plant, as large as a tree ? Or that the woman buying jewellery should empty her purse on just that one precious pearl? But that’s the way it is.
When you’re waiting on God, expect the unexpected, beyond your wildest imaginings.