THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION

Monday 1 June 2019

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

From the Collect for today’s Feast: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word…”

This Collect gives us two reasons why the Virgin Mary is called the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was blessed in bearing the incarnate Son of God the Father. But she was still more blessed in keeping God’s Word. And both blessings, the Collect reminds us, came by the grace or gift of our Father in heaven.

The Collect mirrors the double blessing that Elisabeth pronounces in the Gospel that we’ve just heard. When Mary enters the house, Elisabeth cries out, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” That’s Mary’s first blessing: to be the Mother of the incarnate Lord. But then Elisabeth adds a second blessing: “And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things that were told her from the Lord.”

Saint Luke records Jesus himself repeating a similar double blessing later in his Gospel. In Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” The language is a bit more anatomically graphic that we might feel comfortable with today; but it’s clearly a blessing on the Lord’s mother. In response, he does not deny what she has said, but adds the second part, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”

Part of the genius of the Collects and other liturgical texts in our Prayer Book tradition is that they’re able to weave such a rich web of biblical allusions in so few words: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

Then comes the second part of the Collect, where we ask God for some specific gift or grace related to the day’s liturgical theme: “Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to thy will …”

So the question that the Collect places before us is how we can become more attentive to God’s Word and deepen our devotion to following God’s will. Let’s think about that question.

Many of us, I know, are deeply distressed by what’s happening in our country and the world. What is the safest and most responsible way out of the pandemic? How do we come out of the lockdown and restart the economy so that people have the opportunity to regain their livelihoods while at the same time minimizing new outbreaks of the disease? How do we begin dismantling systemically racist structures that result in people of color fearing death at the hands of the very forces we employ to protect and serve all citizens? And how do we respond to the rage that we’ve seen boiling over into rioting, looting, and arson across our country?

I don’t pretend to have any new or original answers to these difficult and painful questions. But I will say that as Christians the one unique contribution we can make is to attend to God’s Word. We can listen to what God is saying to his people in the Scriptures. In reading, meditation, and prayer we can begin to seek God’s will—for us, for our nation, and for the world.

The Church commends many kinds of practices to help us read and meditate on Scripture, from the Divine Office, to lectio divina, to spiritual exercises in the Ignatian tradition, to daily devotional commentaries like Forward Day-by-Day. Different methods suit different individuals; there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. But today’s Feast invites us to consider what practical steps we might take to strengthen our engagement with God’s Word and deepen our devotion to doing God’s will.

By following Mary’s example, we not only receive God’s blessing, but we also become a blessing to others. The beauty of the Visitation story is this quality of mutual blessing. Mary’s arrival bearing the unborn Jesus is a blessing to both Elisabeth and the unborn John the Baptist who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb; Elisabeth in turn blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. All these blessings originate in Mary’s simple attentiveness and obedience to God’s Word announced by the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”

But they don’t end there. In the song we know as the Magnificat, Mary sings the radical vision of a world transformed: “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

So, when I suggest that our first response to the challenges of our time needs to be hearing and keeping God’s Word, I’m not proposing anything safe, timid, or escapist. On the contrary, Mary points us in a way that is full of excitement, creativity, risk, and promise.

The Blessed Virgin Mary alone is the bearer of the Word-made-flesh, the Mother of God. That is her unique vocation, her unique place in the economy of salvation.

But as baptized Christians we all have the vocation to be bearers of God’s Word: to one another and to the world. That mission begins when we who honor the exaltation of Mary’s lowliness learn to follow her example of devotion to God’s will. Then we shall be blessed as those who hear the Word of God and keep it.