Visitation-Day Homily

Let’s think of two moments in Our Lady’s life, the two moments when she received the Christ.

The first immediately preceded the Visitation. The Blessed Mother left to visit her cousin Elizabeth right after the Archangel Gabriel announced God’s plan to become man in Mary’s womb. And she conceived her child, by the Holy Spirit.

The second time Our Lady received Christ: right after Lord Jesus’ death, when Mary received His Body in her arms.

The poor—those who, humble and meek, rely solely on God’s mysterious plans, who await the justice, not of men but of the Messiah—they are, in the end, the great achievement of the Holy Spirit’s hidden mission. (From the Catechism, para. 716)

God scatters the proud, casts down the mighty, and lifts up the lowly. He fills the hungry with good things. He remembers His promise of mercy to Israel.

Blessed Mother received Christ with utter humility. She received Him on His terms, not hers. She trusted Him with her entire being, even at the moment of His death.

Mary represents all the faithful of ancient Israel. Through all the trials and tribulations of the Old Covenant, they stayed faithful to God. They longed for the Promised Land.

Mary represents all the faithful of the Church. God has fulfilled in her everything that we believe and for which we hope.

And she represents all of creation. In her Magnificat, Our Lady lifts everything up to the Creator, praising His merciful faithfulness.

God loves with tender kindness. Whenever we think of our Lady, that is what we see and know—God’s tender love. She held Him in her lap on Christmas. And she help Him in her lap on Good Friday. And she held Him in her arms on Easter Sunday morning, too.

Our Blessed Mother represents all of us poor souls who live by the simple faith that God is good.

What Does Christmas Really Mean?

Guess what? We read the exact same gospel passage at Holy Mass today and on Sunday.

What do we call it, when the Blessed Mother came to her cousin in the Judean hill country? The Visitation. Two women and two… babies, unborn infants.

What time of year was it? Hmm… We keep the Feast of the Visitation on… May 31. So Mary arrived at Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house on May 31?

We can’t say that for sure. The Church chose the date of May 31 just fifty years ago. Not because we know the exact date when it happened, but because May 31 falls between two Solemnities, namely… Annunciation and Nativity of John the Baptist. (Like the account goes in St. Luke’s gospel, right?)

How about this: How long did Our Lady stay with Elizabeth? Correct! Three months.

How pregnant was Elizabeth when Mary arrived? Right again! Six months.

So one thing we can say for sure is: Our Lady stayed until the time of St. John’s birth. She left either right before or right after Elizabeth gave birth.

We don’t have dates, but we have a clear, reliable time frame: Mary conceived baby Jesus six months after Elizabeth conceived St. John. Then Our Lady traveled south to Judah, and stayed three months. Mary gave birth to Jesus how many months later? This math is not hard. Six.

Now, you probably think: Blah blah blah, Father. We didn’t come here to do math! What’s your point?

Ok. Some people think to themselves: Christmas is all about good feelings and tolerance and world peace. The details don’t matter. Maybe Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem; maybe He wasn’t. Maybe He was born on December 25; maybe He was born some other day. Maybe the Bible is true; maybe it’s all just a lovely story. Doesn’t matter. Christmas simply means: feel good and be a good person.

I DON’T THINK WE COUNT OURSELVES AMONG THE PEOPLE WHO THINK THIS WAY.

I, for one, care. About whether or not December 25 is Jesus’ correct birthday. I don’t want to sing a whole bunch of Masses next Monday night and Tuesday morning–if Jesus actually got born on a different day. I want to sing the Masses on the correct day.

Feel me? So, listen: We will solve this. We will.

It is going to involve an elaborate Bible quiz. So hard that you couldn’t possibly study hard enough. But study hard anyway.

Hidden Visitations

The Blessed Mother traveled eighty miles to visit her cousin Elizabeth and help her. By comparison, regarding distance: my twice-weekly trips between Rocky Mount and Martinsville would get me only halfway there. Our Lady would have continued on, as far as Greensboro.

Rocky Mount, Virginia, and Greensboro, North Carolina are the same distance from each other as Nazareth, Galilee, and the Judean hillside town where Elizabeth and Zechariah lived. And, of course, our Lady had no Nissan Juke to use on a well-maintained four-lane highway.

Now, exactly nine weeks have passed since… Holy Thursday. So today we would keep a Solemnity in honor of the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. But here in the U.S., we will keep Corpus Christi on Sunday instead.

Corpus Christi and Visitation Day go perfectly together. Because:

The Lord visited Elizabeth and Zechariah–and baby John the Baptist in the womb; Christ came in the flesh to their home. But you couldn’t see Jesus at that moment, because He still dwelt in His mother’s womb.

Likewise, the Lord visits us in the Holy Mass. He comes in the flesh, to every Catholic church or chapel, whenever we carry out the ceremony which He instituted on Holy Thursday. He bridges a gap of much more than eighty miles; He brings heaven to the earth.

But He veils Himself from our eyes. Like He did in Mary’s womb. The Holy Mass, the altar, the tabernacle–like our Lady’s womb, during those nine months: a place where Christ dwells, but hidden.

The Day Our Lady Went to Heaven

apse mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore, Roma

We keep the feast of our Lady’s immortality. Not just her immortality of soul, but also her immortality of body. Today her earthly pilgrimage ended. Her flesh, rather than facing the corruption of the grave, entered right into heaven.

Blessed is she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled (Luke 1:45). St. Elizabeth said this about the Blessed Mother.

Now, at the particular moment when Elizabeth pronounced that beatitude, the Lord had spoken but few words to Mary. Only that she would have a son, who would reign forever on the throne of David. How? By the Holy Spirit.

Mary learned only this much information from Archangel Gabriel. You will give birth to the Messiah by the power of the Holy Spirit. Very simple. No extra details. –She believed it.

But what about later on? Did she learn more during the course of her life? More about the great mystery of the Christ–the mystery in which she had believed, when the Archangel visited her? Had she learned more about those original promises by the time her earthly life neared its end? What more had she learned?

Whatever more she learned about the Christian mystery in the time between her conception of her son and her last earthly breath–whatever further aspects of the great promise had been revealed to her–certainly Mary believed it all, with a heart full of love.

We humble sinners really can’t even begin to speculate about all the intimacies that passed between Jesus and Mary during their pilgrim lives on earth–both before and after He suffered, died, and then rose from the dead. We can hardly doubt that the Blessed Mother became a thorough expert regarding Christ’s promise of eternal life in the flesh. She saw Him, of course, during the forty days He spent on earth in His risen body. Mary, first among all Christians, saw the resurrected Jesus. And she believed that He had risen, not for His own sake, but so that she, too, and all the faithful, could conquer death in the flesh, as well.

Which means that this feast of our Lady’s bodily entrance into heaven is the feast of our immortality of body, too. Until August 15 arrived, in the year she finished her earthly life, Mary participated in Christ’s mystery like we do: by faith. We do not begrudge her the privilege of having seen Jesus during the forty days after Easter. We don’t begrudge her because, now that Jesus reigns in heaven, we can, by faith and prayer, achieve our own intimacy with Him, too. After all, as Mary’s cousin put it: “Blessed is she who has believed.” Not she who has seen. She who has believed. Believed in the Christ, and His triumph over death–which He accomplished for the sake of all mankind.

So we stride on towards the inevitable end of our own pilgrimage with vivid assurance. The luminous assurance with which the Virgin herself faced the end of earthly life. That, by the power of Christ, our bodily death will get swallowed up Jesus’ victory.

Magnificat on Visitation Day

Our Lady visited her cousin. Upon arrival, the Blessed Virgin sang a canticle and proclaimed the great truth of religion. Our souls were made to proclaim the greatness of the Lord and to rejoice in Him, our Creator and Savior.

Almighty God looked with favor on us–when He made us out of nothing, and when He redeemed us from sin. We can aspire to no nobler place than to serve Him, because He is the great God of all.

Of course we qualify as “lowly”—compared to Him. But to serve Him means blessedness and honor, compared to serving anyone or anything else. By claiming us as His servants, God has taught us to think more of ourselves, to esteem ourselves more highly, than we ever could have, if He had left us to our own little devices.

Has He not shown the strength of His arm? Not only did He array the stars in their constellations, and make all the trees, and blue whales, and chipmunks, and vast fields and flowers, and everything else—not only did He do all these grand things, He also came to help of His servant Israel.

He formed our holy people, the nation marching to heaven—He formed us by promising a good future to Abraham. And then He backed-up all His promises, sending prophets and then His Christ, who dwelt in Mary’s womb when she visited her cousin Elizabeth.

The mercy of God resounds like an organ chord that extends to infinity, filling all time and space. Our souls were made not to test Him, or to rebel, or quibble—but simply to rejoice that He, Who is good and kind and loving, is our Lord.

Magnificat: True or False?

‘He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty!’…Yes, but I have seen the rich sit secure on their thrones and send the hungry away empty.

–Annie Dillard (stating the obvious with great eloquence, as she often does)

The beautiful, hard world. The dark world, that nonetheless holds surprising little flashes of light. The unfair world, full of people who simply cannot give up believing in fairness.

In his encyclical on Christian hope, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the mystery of evil, the mysterium iniquitatis, head on.

Iniquitatis because we see the innocent, the powerless, the poor suffering. Mysterium because somehow we know it’s wrong; we don’t accept it; we pray and hope and struggle for something better. Evil may be a ‘given’ in this vale of tears, but that doesn’t mean that we regard it as normal. It’s a daggone mystery. Good makes sense to us; evil doesn’t.

Pope Benedict framed the business as follows. One of our most profound problems is: the contemporary mindset regards religion as something purely subjective, emotional, individual. Therefore, ‘salvation’ = my own personal bliss.

But many people of conscience reject religion, if this is what religion is. They cry, “What about the groaning injustice I see in the world, right in front of my eyes? What God is going to give me bliss if He can’t even see to it that the hungry get fed and the innocent don’t get killed?”

Pope Benedict: the Catholic faith recognizes that our longing for justice among men springs from the religious center of the human being. According to the Catholic faith, our hope for salvation does not confine itself to ‘my personal bliss.’ Rather, our hope includes–it must include–justice for the world, the whole world. Everybody in the world.

God does not stand by, an impotent spectator, while the mighty sit on thrones and crush the lowly. God Himself has been crushed by injustice. Then He rose again as the King of all history. On Easter Sunday morning, He showed His power to put things to rights.

The Lord refrains for now from confronting the world with His righteousness, solely so that we have time to repent. He patiently waits for us to stop committing the injustices that make the world an unjust place. He gives us time to love our neighbor. So that when He comes in a supernova of love, we will not be burned to smithereens, but rather caught up in His glory. We share in that glory now by our humble love.

Visitation Facts

Blessed are you who believed that the promises of the Lord would be fulfilled. (Luke 1:45)

The faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary offers us the antidote to the prevalent myth of the 21st century.

Because the myth contains an element of truth. Anybody remember? “Religion cannot have anything to do with knowledge, because God, if He exists, is too mysterious to be known. Religion is about your deepest personal feelings.”

Now, the true part: Religion does indeed offend God if we offer it with anything other than absolute personal sincerity.

There’s only one way to address God honestly, and that is from the center of my heart and mind. No one else can have a relationship with God for me. I have to do it myself.

But here’s the thing; here’s what the Blessed Mother teaches us by her own absolutely intimate personal relationship with God:

When we stand in truth before our Maker, we see that we ourselves do not have what it takes to live, to thrive—even to exist. We are not sufficient unto ourselves. We depend on God for every moment’s breath.

And we need salvation. Death comes for everyone. No amount of personal feelings about God can keep me from dying. Death constitutes the ultimate objective, impartial, non-emotional fact. The only really honest feeling I can have about this fact is: “God, help me! Lord, save us!”

So, if we accept the true part of our century’s myth about God, then we see clearly how false the other part of the myth is. We need objective knowledge about God’s plan. Without it, we can have no real hope and no real joy. We need to hear His promises, believe in them, and believe in His power to fulfill them.

What did the Blessed Mother know about herself, above all? That she could not save herself. She was conceived without sin, by a special dispensation of the grace of the Cross. But her immaculate conception only made her more aware that she needed God. And more aware that God Who says, “I will save you,” will do it.

What’s the difference between a Catholic and an Evangelical?

A Catholic believes everything an Evangelical believes about Jesus and the Bible. But you can sit and drink a beer with the Catholic; you can talk about the Mets sweeping the Yankees, and the Catholic will not feel obliged to bring up religion.

Now, in truth: This is the more genuinely evangelical approach. Catholicism survives and thrives precisely because it is perfectly compatible with living the life of a normal baseball fan.

But: we cannot accept; we must dispute; we have the duty to object to the idea that one religion is just as good as another, because it really has to do with your personal feelings. It doesn’t. Maybe some religions have to do with feelings. But ours has to do with what God Himself has said to the human race, the commandments He has given and the promises He has made.

So if my buddy says, in between reflections on Stephen Strasburg’s prospects, that his brother left the Church to marry a Mormon, but that’s okay because he’s happy! I have to reply, “Can’t agree with you there, pal. I would sooner die than miss Mass, even if I got to marry Marie Osmond. Cheers!”

Quinceañera Visitation

Today I celebrate Mass for the fourth time this month with the Visitation gospel reading from St. Luke.

This is the gospel reading assigned for a Quinceañera Mass, when a young Mexican woman renews her baptismal promises and consecrates herself anew to the service of God.

Recalling the Visitation suits the occasion of a Quinceañera Mass perfectly.

The Blessed Mother showed the kind spirit of a Christian woman in thinking of her cousin and going to help her. The moment when Mary and Elizabeth met gave the world a beautiful, quiet sign of the coming of the Messiah, when St. John recognized Christ–womb-to-womb, so to speak. And the Blessed virgin expressed the heart of a prayerful quinceañera when she sang her Magnificat, glorifying God for His immeasurable goodness and generosity.

We give thanks that we have life. We give thanks that Christ has given us every reason to hope for eternal consolation. We give thanks that He chose us and made us His own. The Almighty has done great things for us. Holy is His name.

Good Company Evangelizes

Mary set out in those days and traveled. (Luke 1:39)

We read about our Lady’s holy Visitation of St. Elizabeth during this season of much visitation. We wish safe journeys to everyone about to set out in haste.

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leapt in her womb.”

Of course, at this moment, supernatural grace operated, and St. John had his first interaction with Christ–womb-to-womb, so to speak.

But grace, as we know, builds on nature. Can we not imagine that the sound of the Blessed Virgin’s voice simply brought joy to the ears of her friends? That a visit from our Lady meant the pleasure of good company?

Does the sound of my voice bring joy to the people I visit? If not, is it because I nag or criticize? Is it because I never make the effort to contribute in a thoughtful manner to a decent conversation? Is it because all I ever talk about is myself?

The Blessed Mother brought Christ with her when she came to visit Elizabeth and Zechariah. She brought her love, her friendship, her affectionate care. She brought unassuming peace, patient devotion to the truth, ready attentiveness, and—I think we can imagine—a sweet sense of humor. How could she have gotten through everything she had to get through without one?

Being good company makes a pretty respectable witness to Christ. We might not be able to convince everyone to go to Mass with us. But if we are good company, we’ve got a shot at it.

Hidden in the Womb

The Basilica of the Visitation

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb. –Luke 1:41

We all started off our lives in our mothers’ wombs. We were hidden from the eyes of men, but we were very much alive.

When St. John the Baptist was in St. Elizabeth’s womb, he realized that the Son of God had come to his house. In other words, St. John exercised his mission as a prophet even before he was born.

Christ Himself also exercised His mission before birth. At the moment the Lord Jesus was conceived, God first lived with a human soul. At that moment, Christ made an act of submission to the Father. The act is perfectly expressed in the words of the fortieth Psalm:

I waited, waited for the LORD, who bent down and heard my cry, drew me out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud of the swamp, set my feet upon rock, steadied my steps, and put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God.

Happy those whose trust is the LORD, who turn not to idolatry or to those who stray after falsehood…

Sacrifice and offering you do not want; but ears open to obedience you gave me. Holocausts and sin-offerings you do not require; so I said, “Here I am; your commands for me are written in the scroll. To do your will is my delight; my God, your law is in my heart!”

Our lives begin at the moment of conception. Life begins to unfold in the womb. St. John’s mission in life was to point out the Lamb of God. He began to fulfill this mission even before he was born. The Lord Jesus’ mission was to offer Himself completely to the Father, to sacrifice Himself for the redemption of the world. Christ accomplished His self-offering perfectly even while He was still hidden in Mary’s womb. His 33 years on earth were simply a matter of living out what He had already resolved to do.