It is a major misconception of our faith to think that we come to God alone. God has made us connected to one another. We depend upon other people to find our way to God, and we have a responsibility to help others find their way. If we’re going to experience Emmanuel, God-with-Us , we will do so together. We do not travel the journey of faith alone.
The Gospel image of Mary greeting Elizabeth is filled with meaning for us as we begin our celebration of the feast of Christmas. These two women come together so that they can share their questions and their doubts in confidence, so that they can celebrate the wonder and the anticipation which both of them feel. The two women come together in order to affirm one another’s faith, to help each other on their way to God.
God comes to His people in unexpected disguises, in strange circumstances, using ordinary people and places. So often we do not recognize His visit, His coming into our lives. We see only the surface, the obvious. We can miss the opportunity to leap for joy at the nearness of our God.
We need to see with the eyes of faith. We need to understand that our God continues to visit us, to announce good news to us in unexpected ways. We want to be able to leap for Joy because we know that He is near us, within us. Like Mary and Elizabeth, we need to trust that His promises to us will be fulfilled.
The simple family visit of Mary and Elizabeth is such a powerful and intimate reminder that if we can believe, we are never alone. Once we accept the miracle of God-made-man, then every facet of human life takes on a new dimension - a Jesus-dimension. Everything is touched by His spirit of love, of peace, of hope.
The Word has been made flesh and we have been remade, lifted up, revived. Our distant, faceless, timeless God has taken a mortal body as His own. He has entered our time and come to our place. He has grown up among us, learned our language, played our games, sang our songs, shared our pain and sorrow, and embraced to the full our human fellowship.
The eternal Word needed to be spoken on our tongue. We needed someone heaven-sent to teach us to dare to call God "Abba, Father." The word "love" had to be translated in terms that the simplest one among us could understand: compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus gave new meaning to the words "brother", "sister," "neighbor," "prodigal," "Samaritan." He shocked the world of the self-righteous by suggesting that the poor, the lepers, the prostitutes and the tax collectors would be the very first to enter the kingdom of God. He tossed the pearl of forgiveness and hope to adulteresses and thieves. And He added the word "resurrection" to the vocabulary of faith.
The story of the Visitation is both a description and an example of our connectedness to one another. No one of us needs to travel this road alone.
