December 12th

The Visitation

[It is snowing here. It snowed! Right as Diana and I got out of dinner, so that we could come out in the brief snowfall. It will snow more tomorrow. This is awesome.]

If the rosary is meant as a template for the faith journey, then the Visitation strikes me as the First Sacrifice, by which I mean the first offering that God asks of us after the call. In what I have seen, this first step is easy, at least relatively, and often something we are glad to finally be doing. It's something that makes us feel good for doing, a sacrifice that gives back a hundred fold.

Mary's visit with Elizabeth, going to see her also-miraculously-pregnant cousin, certainly fits that bill. Perhaps more importantly, the story also stands in for discovering the strength of a faith community, the fellowship that comes with shared faith and miracles. A new member of the faith sees how easily Jesus can be seen in others and has their first experience (or first big experience) with someone else seeing Jesus in them.

My mother is the one who first introduced me to this message in the Mystery: how others should be able to see Jesus in us as Elizabeth immediately did for Mary.

Any way you slice it, this is a really nice part of the faith journey. There is love and fellowship and discovery of the beauty of a soul on fire with the light of God.

It's important to remember where that light comes from, as Mary did with the Magnificat. My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in my Savior.

But perhaps the most important thing to take away from this point in a spiritual journey, whenever it falls in the path, is to keep the Magnificat close, to hold on to that praise and love of God and strength of fellowship when time grow increasingly hard. We must praise God, we must realize that our souls are glorifying the Lord, even when we are listening to a strange prophet tell us how our baby son will die, even when we stand beneath the cross. This first taste of the wonder of God must be carried with us always, never too far out of sight, as we pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

God is always with us, He will never abandon us, but it can be hard to hold on to this image of God: the all-powerful God who fulfills all of His promises, who lifts the lowly and humbles the proud, who works great deeds through the least likely of His children. When the world seems terrible - the kind of world that cannot be the will of a loving God - we must remember that He still is every bit as powerful and all-knowing and beyond our understanding. We must remember to praise Him, even in the darkness. Otherwise, we can lose sight even of the comforting side of God, even of the mystery.

The Magnificat is a beautiful time in a faith journey, but the point is building a foundation that will stick through thick and thin.

May we all be so beautiful as Mary and her speech, and may we all hold it as closely to our hearts as we march closer and closer to Calvary.