When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice
Even before the child was born he was already the cause of profound joy, the joy of the consolation of the Holy Spirit himself. What Elizabeth experienced was a joy at the nearness of the Messiah, even before Christmas day fully unveiled that gift. What the prophet Balaam saw but not near (see Numbers 24:17) had now been brought very near indeed to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth seemed to receive supernatural insight into the mystery of the conception of Jesus, as though John the forerunner was already preparing the way of Jesus even from the womb. It was as though John's leap for joy overflowed into recognition by Elizabeth that this mother and child before her were the fulfillment of the hope of Israel.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Perhaps Mary had explained to Elizabeth the message that Gabriel proclaimed at the annunciation of the birth of Jesus. Or perhaps the Spirit had simply given her knowledge of what had transpired, since it seemed that this rejoicing and this comprehension began the very moment Mary entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. However it was that she came to know it, it was by the proximity of the presence that she understood it experientially. She could then hear the message of Gabriel...
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (see Luke 1:32-33).
...and perceive the fulfillment of God's message to Micah and to all of the prophets..
Therefore the Lord will give them up, until the time
when she who is to give birth has borne,
and the rest of his kindred shall return
to the children of Israel.
Mary was the one on whom the whole people of Israel were waiting, the one who would be the mother to the ruler from Bethlehem. He would be the one would stand firm and shepherd his flock by the strength of the LORD, in the majestic name of the LORD his God. Israel had a history of rulers who fell short in their responsibilities and did not deliver on the seeming promise of their reign, a history of shepherds who did not rely on the strength or the name of the LORD. The child at the center of the Visitation was the one who would finally be different. But just how different would he be, indeed, could he be? Elizabeth came to understand this difference as she was overawed by the Messiah being brought to her by the blessed faith of Mary, just as David was overwhelmed by the presence of the Ark of the covenant.
Whatever Elizabeth might have understood about the Mary's situation before she arrived, based on hearsay about Mary's situation, or based on the prophetic word to Zechariah, it was precisely in the presence of Jesus himself that this concept took on the full density of reality. Until that point all the hints about how the LORD would be present in the promised child necessarily remained somewhat veiled. The LORD had been present to varying degrees in the lives of great figures of the history of Israel. But what Elizabeth experienced was that the way the LORD would be present in this one was a difference of kind and not just degree.
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
She seemed to come to know by experience, by the movement of the Spirit within her, that Jesus was not simply Lord in the sense of the Messianic king, that Mary, by association was something even more blessed than a Queen Mother. Rather, she seemed to intuit, by the power of his presence, that he was LORD in the fullest sense for which Scripture used the term. She spoke as though the child was equivalent to the presence of God himself within the Ark.
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions (see Matthew 22:44-46).
Elizabeth desires to teach us a plan for how we can welcome Jesus this Christmas and receive the same promised joy that she received. If we listen we too can have the same peace promised by Micah in the first reading, and then re-echoed by the angels who say in heaven at his birth.
Elizabeth was not without her own problems. It's hard enough for young people in modern times to prepare for and deal with a birth. Imagine someone who was already old doing so in times before modern medicine. It would have been easy to become closed in on herself and unable to welcome the assistance of Mary, too distracted to even notice the nearness of the Messiah. But what Elizabeth did instead, what we can choose to do as well, was to welcome the presence of Mary, and therefore experience the nearness of the Messiah. This can charge the promises of the prophets with a kind of electricity when they are no longer something distant for us, but even already the cause of peace and joy. We can go from knowing about the coming king to already experiencing his presence in a way that prepares our hearts in hope for the coming of Christmas.
First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings,
holocausts and sin offerings,
you neither desired nor delighted in.”
It isn't in the first place about doing more or working harder. The obedience which God asks of us, which he himself makes possible in Jesus Christ, is given so that these promises of joy and peace can be ours. Sin had to be dealt with, not merely to create a neutral situation without guilt, but to remove obstacles within us to just how near Jesus desires to come. We see this as a living reality in Mary's fiat and throughout the life of Jesus himself:
Then he says, :Behold, I come to do your will.”
Elizabeth was able to recognize this not as a burden, but instead as the most blessed of blessings.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will!
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