Holy Week 2024

                                          This Week's Homily

[Micah 5 : 2-5 ; 

Psalm 80 (79) : 1,2,3,14,15,17,18 ; 

Hebrews 10 : 5-10 ;

Luke 1 : 39-45]

Today, in the gospel, Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Those who recite the chaplet know that this meeting of Mary and Elizabeth is the second joyful mystery of the rosary.

Nobody is an island. We visit people and we all love to be visited. We are happy to come together. We are happy to share camaraderie, friendship, brotherhood, values and principles. We are happy to make contacts. It has been said that the main reason for dementia is solitude. We like to have guests, but not just anybody and everybody! We like visits by friends and relatives, that is, we like being visited by people with whom we feel at ease and in whose presence we are happy being the best person that we can be. Sometimes we visit elders or other great people, like some of our own teachers, who have valued us and shown us the way to advance in life. We are grateful to them. Mary’s visit today makes us guess that Elizabeth was such a person to her. They were cousins but Elizabeth was much older than her. And since both are believers, women of faith, still another dimension gets added to their visit.

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,” says the gospel (Lk 1:39). Mary has made hurried preparations. She has 150 km to go on foot. In those days, there was no vehicular transport as such, and it took about a week to cover the distance. Perhaps she joined a caravan to Jerusalem where Zachariah, the husband of her cousin Elizabeth, is a priest in the Temple. That a young woman was able to travel alone such a great distance all by herself is first of all an eloquent testimony to the Pax Romana, the Roman system of governance. We can say that, in a sense, the world was healthier and more secure in those times than it is today (1). The village of Ain Karim, where Zachariah and Elizabeth live, is in the western suburbs of the city, 8 km from downtown. Today, it is the medical university of Jerusalem with a big hospital attached to it.

In all earnestness, the humble servant of the Lord leaves her village of Nazareth, nestled in the hills of Galilee. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” will ask Nathanael of the apostle Philip (Jn 1:23). But when Mary said “yes” to the angel, the Word of God descended from heaven into Nazareth. Today, with Mary, it comes out of Nazareth and travels up to Jerusalem. From Jerusalem, the Word will spread to Samaria and to the ends of the earth, and even up to my heart, that is, if I but willingly receive it.

We can relish the theological significance of this visit, as suggested by Luke. “Elizabeth” means “God has promised”. She is the wife of Zachariah, a priest in the temple of Jerusalem. “Zechariah” means “God has remembered”. Their child is John the Baptist, whose name signifies “God has shown grace”. So God had promised through his prophets, and now God has remembered his promise, and shows grace in the person of John the Baptist. He will be the last prophet of the first Covenant. Thus, the house of Zachariah represents the Old Testament. Today, it receives the visit of Mary, whose name in Hebrew is Myriam, meaning “princess” or “lady”. We can say that today, the Old Testament receives the visit of its princess. Elizabeth exclaims, “Why has this happened that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb danced for joy” (2). We are reminded of Isaiah (7:14): “Behold, a virgin is with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” – ‘God-with-us’. 

The meeting of Elizabeth and Mary is thus an encounter between the Old and the New Testaments. These two women, who in Zechariah’s house hail and hug each other, represent the past and the present. Through these two women, the two orders of salvation meet and greet each other. The Old passes on the relay to the New, the old Elizabeth to the young Mary, the prophecy to fulfilment.

Life is the art of encounter, says Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian poet. One of the nicest things in life is to meet an open, friendly, hospitable person. You can already tell from the quality of the handshake if you are dealing with such a person. That person not only makes you feel welcome, but makes you feel that it is good to be you. That human hospitality is today raised into the domain of faith. Mary and Elizabeth make us discover in the joyous encounters of this festive season that the communion of spirit between people is one of the most precious gifts of Christmas. So, no more anger, no more grudges, no more bitterness. This discovery can be lived in depth if we know how to look at others with the same faith that Mary and Elizabeth had, and accept the fact that others also have the right to joy and peace, and therefore have the right to be understood, supported, and encouraged on their life’s path. Through these two women, we see manifested God’s presence in the simplicity of our daily lives (3).

As for Zechariah, he has been struck dumb. The poor man will not be able to utter a single word to these women all through their encounter of three months (Lk 1:56). What a punishment! It is the women alone who talk, and Zechariah listens! As at the resurrection, so at the incarnation, it is the women who have the beginnings of faith (Lk 24:22-24).

At the end of three months, John the Baptist is born! He will close the last chapter of the Old Testament and pave the way for the new. It is time for new beginnings. And so Zechariah’s tongue loosens and his mouth breaks open! “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; He has visited and redeemed his people,” he exclaims (Lk 1: 68). All is but joy! Mary takes leave of Elizabeth and family. Other journeys await her arrival in Nazareth. For us, it will also be a question of taking the road to Bethlehem with Mary in a few days.

“Show us the way, Mary. Guide us through the path of life.” Amen.

(1) “In the age of Augustus, after the great upheavals of war and civil strife, a wave of hope surges through the land: now at last a great period of peace, a new world order, seems about to dawn” (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume III, op. cit., p. 55).

(2) “At the annunciation the angel had told Mary that the child to be conceived in her would be the new David. With that magnificent prophecy still ringing in her ears, Mary set out to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was married to Zechariah, a temple priest. No first-century Jew would have missed the significance of their residence being in “the hill country of Judah.” That was precisely where David found the ark, the bearer of God’s presence. To that same hill country now comes Mary, the definitive and final Ark of the Covenant. 

Elizabeth is the first to proclaim the fullness of the Gospel: “How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”—the Lord, which is to say, the God of Israel. Mary brings God into the world, thus making it, at least in principle, a temple.

And then Elizabeth announces that at the sound of Mary’s greeting, “the infant in my womb leaped for joy.” This is the unborn John the Baptist doing his version of David’s dance before the ark of the covenant, his great act of worship of the King.” (Bishop Robert Barron, Advent Gospel Reflections, wof@wordonfire.org, Saturday, December 21, 2024)

(3) The mystery of the visitation of Mary has been called mission ad intra, mission at home. In other words, ad extra can be in one’s own country. The call of faith can be well discerned in the ties to be created and the relationships to be tended to in one’s own home and within one’s own family. Thus visitation gives meaning to the struggle that all men and women of good will lead so that the world becomes a little more liveable for others. This is what is suggested in today’s encounter. Elizabeth needed the reassuring presence of someone like Mary as she was in an embarrassing situation, given her age, as is evident in Luke 1:24. Mary also surely needed the comforting presence of Elizabeth and preferred perhaps to be away from Nazareth for some time, after all that she had to go through, with Joseph first thinking of putting her away secretly before taking her back in faith. She may also have thought that far from Nazareth, she would be able to conceal her pregnancy for a few months.

Tiburtius Fernandez SMA, © Treasures of The Word, Homilies for Year C, St. Paul's, Bandra, Bombay, India