I’d like to reflect on the mystery of the Visitation and enter that mystery, in the here and now, by focusing on the Holy Spirit’s powerful engagement in the Visitation narrative. We’re asking the Spirit to act and move among us in a similar way to the Spirit’s action between Mary and Elizabeth, between the unborn infants Jesus and John. For by the very nature of our call as Visitandines, we are living out that mystery in our own time.
The Holy Spirit is very central in the Visitation scene. It is by the power of the Spirit that the action flows. When Mary said yes to the angel at the Annunciation, she was espoused to the Holy Spirit who filled her and empowered her to go in haste to her cousins. She was traveling in the spirit under his strength and power.
In the power of the Spirit she arrives in the town of Judah, enters the house and greets Elizabeth. This greeting was as a verbal laying on of hands onto Elizabeth, which seems to have released the Holy Spirit in her.
Elizabeth “heard” Mary’s greeting. She listened and that listening was the channel through which the Holy Spirit entered within her. Listening, a simple yet intense action is the receptivity we need to be grasped by the Spirit. It is a very Visitandine disposition to take.
Hearing Mary’s greeting, the receptive Elizabeth also served as a holy channel to John in her womb, becoming as it were an instrument for her son’s spiritual birth, as he subsequently stirred or leaped within her. We are to be channels as well, to the new candidates who will come to discern with us. In a sense, each of us is an “Elizabeth” and Mary our Blessed Mother will minister to us, as we remain attentive to her.
The Gospel states quite distinctly that then Elizabeth “was filled” with the Holy Spirit. From that filling flowed out spiritual gifts in abundance. She becomes a witness, has a prophetic voice, receives charisms or spiritual gifts and begins to proclaim the truth about the present moment; deep, essential truths.
Elizabeth proclaims, loudly, “Blest are you among women and blest is the fruit of your womb”. The one right before her, in this present moment, her cousin, is identified, in a very deep way. Her initial truth is a statement about Mary’s identity. She is a blessed one. Elizabeth “sees” as it were Mary’s relationship with God, her state of soul, her blessedness. She also sees “Jesus” in Mary, recognizing the fruit of Mary’s relationship with God in her life.
“But who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” The gift of humility is so clearly expressed here, this cornerstone virtue of a Visitandine as well. As we humbly present ourselves before the Lord open to His will, we ask the Mother of Our Lord to come to us with her special grace at this time in the life of our Federation and Order.
Elizabeth’s proclamation also reveals the gift of knowledge given to her. She knows Mary’s condition, that she is expecting a Child, she knows that the unborn child is Lord, her Lord. We too can ask for the gift of knowledge; it is a gift given within the Gospel event of the Visitation and thus, in a sense, bequeathed to us.
We can ask for the gift and the power of the Holy Spirit within us to help us see and proclaim the truth of our circumstances, of our path, and of our relationship with the Lord. As long as we can also say “but who am I?”
“Blessed is she who trusted that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled.”
Trust. We really need to trust and we need to model that deepening of trust, among our Sisters. Each of us has received the individual promise of our God to our hearts and as an Order we have received promises from the Lord. We are called to trust that the promises God has made to us, over our 403 years of history, over our 200+ years of history in the US will be fulfilled. We have been blessed and we will be blessed.
What can we call upon or claim? The gift of listening hearts, of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the gifts of knowledge, discernment, humility, trust, and joy . The words the Lord has spoken to us or will speak, that they will be fulfilled, in His time.
This is our heritage, our Gospel-based treasure, that which we can call our own as Visitandines.
The road to this mystery of the Visitation was long and arduous for the Israelite people, but that road and that waiting with its multiple ups and downs also has something to say to us today as a Visitation Order .Actually we do not know where we stand in God’s plan; what stage we’re in; all that is beyond us as it was beyond St Francis and St Jane at the start of our Order. It’s likely that they envisioned few of the various manifestations of God that has occurred in our Order. Even in their immediate future they were moved in directions, as we all know, for which they never planned. I don’t imagine that we’re any different.
But we do have a road to follow. We have a faithfulness to keep. Our interior stance, before our own mystery and before the unknown future, may very well be a stance of waiting,. And while we do not fully know the designs of God for us we can respond to its hints by responding to this call and mission with deep love and hope. We are being asked to let go and also to begin. When that happened to the people of Israel in their history, when they were reduced to a remnant with nothing to hold on to but God, He did bring them to a new place, or a new covenant, or a new understanding.
They also had a foundational hope, a promise, that which was made to Abraham. We need to reflect on our foundational promises. He is Lord of the Impossible. Our hope in him is in his fidelity.
And we can continue to deeply listen to one another and to the Spirit as we use the gifts God has given each of us to guide our communities in this special time.
