III Mystery visitatiom of Mary to her cousin Elisabeth - Part II

The Annunciation evokes listening to the Word of God – The Visitation evokes incarnating that Word
At the Annunciation, Mary is attentive to listening to the Word of God transmitted to her through Angel Gabriel. This is the attitude of the true disciple, like Mary of Bethany at the feet of the Lord, choosing, according to the Master, the better part. At the Annunciation, Mary has the same experience as the prophet Jeremiah, for whom the word of God is sweet to the palate, as sweet as honey.

The Visitation is the attempt to incarnate the Word, of putting it into practice, so that we are not only disciples of the Master, but also close relatives of his and of his mother’s, who went through the same process, as well as his brothers and sisters. Whoever hears the Word and does not make it a daily behaviour, does not incarnate it, or does not put it into practice, will be like the person who built his house on the sand. (Matthew 7: 24-27)

The Word reveals to us God's will for us; to put it into practice is to do God’s will, which was already for Jesus his lifeblood, and so it must also be for us. The Word, as the Bible says, is life-giving and effective; it is in its practice that it becomes life and effectiveness.

‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”’ Matthew 7: 21-23

“Lord, open to us”, then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” Luke 13: 25-27

Commenting and paraphrasing the above texts, “Lord, Lord” is the equivalent to listening to the Word of God. Whether the Lord knows us or not depends on the practice of the Word of God. God does not know us from our religious practice in the church, but from the way we behave in the streets. The above text of Matthew is followed by the metaphor of building a house either on sand or on rock. The one that puts the word into practice built it on rock, and the one who does not practice what he says he believes built his house on sand.

It is not when we say "Lord, Lord" that Jesus knows us, but it is when we visit him in our neighbour, in the needy, in the weakest, where He is hidden. Paraphrasing St. John, in listening to the Word we love God whom we do not see, in visiting our neighbour we see God whom we love.

If the Annunciation evokes the seed and the sowing of the Word – The Visitation evokes the ground where the Word falls and bears fruit
In the parable of the Sower, the Word of God is compared to a seed of quality which has within itself the potential to bear good fruit; a seed that may even be as small as a mustard seed, but which can grow into a tree large enough for the birds of the air to nest and mate, thus generating more life.

The seed is the Word of God and the Sower is Christ; it depends on the ground whether this seed will bear fruit or not. It is not the fault of the seed nor the sower, but of the ground on which the seed falls. The wheat that God sowed in Mary's womb became for us the bread of eternal life.

If the Annunciation evokes faith and hope – The Visitation evokes charity
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. James 2:14- 24

This is an issue that divides Protestants and Catholics and which I believe is a great equivocation. Saint Paul in his writings overlooks many parts of the gospel, especially Matthew 25 regarding the final judgment which is about works and not about faith. All the questions that were asked in this judgment are concerning love of neighbour, not love of God.

In my understanding, when St. Paul speaks of the works that by themselves do not save us, he is referring to the works inspired or done by formal obedience to the law of Moses, that same law which the Council of Jerusalem decided not to impose on Christians coming from paganism. The Pharisees thought that they were saved by formal obedience to the law of Moses; whereas what saves a Christian is being like Jesus, practicing works of mercy, even if he does not believe in Him.

Based on this passage of the scripture, if we had to choose between loving our neighbour and loving God, we should choose loving our neighbour, for by loving our neighbor we are loving God indirectly; by loving God alone we are certainly much deceived, for the God we think we love is the Father of our neighbour whom we ignore. The surer way to salvation then, is by loving God not directly but indirectly through our neighbour.

Loving God without loving our neighbour is the sort of religion that Karl Marx calls the opium of the people. It is a faith without verification or confirmation, because we see our neighbour and we do not see God. In this way, we have a false image of God since it does not lead us to love our neighbour. If faith is the account, charity or love of neighbour is the litmus test or confirmation that this account is accurate; therefore, only by works can we verify that the faith is real.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end, as for tongues, they will cease, as for knowledge, it will come to an end. (…) And now faith, hope and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love.  1 Corinthians 13:8, 13

If the Annunciation evokes freedom – The Visitation evokes fraternity and equality
At the Annunciation, Mary was praying, in contact with God and exercising her love for God above all things. She was, therefore, exercising the human value of freedom on which rests the individual life of every human.

We are only truly free when we love God above all things and all people. When we worship Him, that is, when we submit ourselves only to Him, when He alone is the Lord to whom we pay homage and servitude, when this happens, we are truly free from everything and everyone.

The idea that comes to our minds when freedom is mentioned is that of living independently and autonomously, without constraints. Freedom, in the sense of autonomy, is inherent to all types of life or organic matter; it is doing things for oneself, being autonomous and self-contained like a cell, or like a tree that produces its own food through the process of photosynthesis.

Much more than for animals, freedom is a "condictio sine qua non" of human life. Animals or plants do what nature has predestined for them, they do not go outside of these molds, so they have no power over life itself, they have no power of choice.

Human beings, by contrast, are not predestined by Nature, nor does Nature exercise power over them. Human beings do not have strictly a "habitat", an environment conducive to human life, that is, a single place where human life is possible. Instead of adapting to Nature, human beings have the ability to adapt Nature to their needs.

Today the word "artificial" has a negative connotation, it connotes not natural, fake, man-made, harmful to health... However, the word at its origin has a good meaning, it comes from the Latin "ars facere” which means to make art. For humans, the artificial is natural, the natural is artificial. What is natural in human beings is the creativity to use Nature to their advantage.

Animals are alive; the human being is not only alive, but he also lives because he can make of his life and with his life whatever he wants, direct it as he wants and even end it if he so decides. The human being has his life in his own hands, not because he possesses it but because he has the ability to manage it as he wishes, to direct it, to spend it all on a project, a fundamental option to which he has talent and feels called. This is what Beethoven did when he dedicated his life to music, Picasso to painting, Gandhi to gaining India’s independence without violence.

In the Visitation, Mary is in contact with her neighbour, exercising her love of neighbour in the person of her cousin Elizabeth. She was being the good Samaritan because she was helping her cousin even without being asked, as she did at the wedding feast in Cana later on. Without anyone asking her, she solved the problem of the wine running out: she probably realized before the bridegroom that such a problem existed, and in an act of great empathy with the bridegroom and his family, she solved the problem by involving her Son and his power to make all things new.

Freedom as the first value of the French Revolution concerned the relationship between individual and society; as its second, it concerned the relationship between individuals within society. The human being is a personal, individual being, but he is not an island: he is always part of a family, a clan, a tribe, a nation.

As we have already reflected in a previous text, the human being is one and triune, just like God and his creation. It takes two human beings to give birth to one, so one does not exist, but coexists with two others. If the basic value of a human being as a personal and individual being is freedom, the value on which the human being as a social being is based is equality.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18

There is no better definition of equality in the world than this verse. The other person is an alter ego, that is, he is another ‘I’; not a ‘you’, an external entity, strange, foreign, distant, but my neighbour, so close that he is another ‘I’, an alter-ego, from where the word altruism comes from.

What is due to me is due to him, because he is a human being like me and we all come from the same common root, born in the Rift Valley 5 million years ago. Equality and coexistence in society are based on the principle that my rights are my neighbour’s duties and my duties are my neighbour’s rights.

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For, with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.’ Matthew 7:1

* It is a divine exhortation to equality not to put ourselves above others, judging them, because we are all equal. No one made us judges, and we would only be judges, we could only throw that first stone, if we had not sinned. But we have all sinned, and we often judge others for the same sins and defects that we ourselves have, so our judgment is hypocritical.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  Galatians 3:28

*Jesus healed foreigners and often exalted their faith. He treated men and women as equals, he was the only Rabbi who had female disciples. In the parables he told, he sought a balance between men and women as protagonists. He fought the cliché that women should dedicate themselves exclusively to domestic work, having as their sole vocation to be mothers. In this way, 2000 years ago, Jesus was already in favor of integrating women into the world of work, alongside men. (Cf.  Luke 10:38-42, Luke 11:17)

Mary's visits
We explain and justify that Mary is a mediatrix and intercessor in Heaven with the episode of the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1-11), in which she presents the needs of the guests to her Son, while exhorting them to do whatever He says. Then why not explain and justify Mary's visits with the episode of the visitation to her cousin Elizabeth? (Luke 1:39-45)

In her visits, Mary does not bring a new gospel, a new message, but like the Holy Spirit whose Spouse she is, she recalls the forgotten parts of the message (cf. John 14:26) of her Son and reinterprets them in the "here and now" of human history. In fact, one of the important factors in the genuineness of these messages is their agreement with the gospel.

Mary continues to visit those of whom she is a mother at pivotal moments in her children’s history, to help embody in these moments and places the eternal Word of her Son.

Guadalupe – Support for evangelization
How were the indigenous people in 1531 Mexico going to willingly accept the religion of the Spanish conquistadors, explorers and murderers, if Mary had not appeared to an indigenous person. In fact, the natives until that time were reticent to Christianity, converted en masse after the Marian apparitions.

Lourdes – Confirmation from Heaven
An important part of the Lourdes' message is the confirmation from Heaven in 1858 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception instituted by Pope Pius IX four years earlier in 1854.

Fatima - "Penance and Prayer" are the solution
Between two world wars, Mary proposed in Fatima, among other things, “Penance and Prayer" as a means to face militant atheism, then and now.

Conclusion: After the total giving of herself to God at the Annunciation, Mary gave herself in equal measure to her neighbour when she visited her cousin Elizabeth.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

III Mystery: Visitation of Mary to Her Cousin Elizabeth - Part 1

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry:

‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believes that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’  Luke: 1:39-45

The news that her cousin Elizabeth was already in her sixth month of pregnancy was announced by the angel as proof that to God nothing is impossible. Upon hearing it, however, Mary made no further comment but kept it in her heart, and as soon as her encounter with God’s messenger was over, she left for Ein Karen, a village about 145 km from Nazareth where her cousin lived. The trip was made by caravan, in the company of other travelers, which must have taken between 7 to 10 days.

From the encounter with the angel and the words of Elizabeth to Mary, the first half of the prayer much loved and recited by Catholics is formulated – the Hail Mary prayer. This first part is composed of the words of the angel, followed by the words of Elizabeth and ends with Jesus who is the center of this prayer, as he has always been the center of Mary's life.

The second part of the prayer reflects what Mary is to each of us individually and her role in the Salvation History of the human race as a whole. That is why we ask her to pray to God for us "now", in the every "now(s)" of our lives and especially in that ultimate "now" of our passage from this world to the Father. As she stood at the foot of her son's cross in his passion, so she accompanies us in ours.

Annunciation/Visitation
There is a dialectic between the angel’s annunciation to Our Lady and Our Lady’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, which makes these two mysteries both joyful and Marian, inseparable from each other, that is, they cannot and should not be understood individually, but always in relation to each other.

In these two mysteries and in what they can mean and evoke, the entire life of a Christian is reflected, that is, they synthesize in themselves the life of a Christian. That is why Mary is for us a model of Christian life; in fact, she was not only the mother of the Lord, but she was also his disciple -- mother because she was a disciple, disciple because she was the mother (Luke 8:21). So, therefore:

If the Annunciation evokes the "Ora", the prayer, then the Visitation evokes the "Labora", the practice of good works

One day, a great king visited his spiritual master and asked him, "How can I attain Union with God? I want you to answer me in one sentence, because I'm a very busy man." The master said to him, “I can answer you with just one word." "What is the word?" asked the king. "Silence, " replied the spiritual master. "And how can I achieve silence"? "Through prayer." "And what is prayer?" "It's silence, " replied the master.

In the silence I find myself within me and I find God within the depth of my being. In the clatter I lose myself and I lose to God. The prodigal son did what he did because he went about divorced from himself but when he came to his senses, he went back to God; therefore, being with God implies being with oneself and vice versa. Whoever is outside of himself is outside of God. Because, as St. Augustine said, "Deus interior intimo meo". God is deeper than my innermost self, He is beyond my inmost self, that is, I cannot reach God without going pass myself.

The "know yourself" philosophy of Socrates is not possible without prayer. Without a time dedicated to prayer, as Mary and her son did, we do not get to know our talents, our virtues, and our flaws and limitations. A life that is not self-reflective, as Socrates also said, is not worth living. For it is in self-awareness that we can exercise control over our impulses and bad instincts. Without self-awareness, there is no self-control.

The Gospels often present Jesus, especially in the decisive moments, withdrawing alone to a place far from the crowds and his own disciples, in order to pray in silence and to live out his filial relationship with God. Silence is able to carve out an inner space within ourselves, as Pope Benedict XVI said, for God to live in it so that his Word may remain in us, and our love for him may take root in our minds and hearts so to animate our lives.

Therefore, the first step is to relearn silence, the openness to listening, which opens us to the above, to the Word of God. As Karl Rahner, the great 20th century Jesuit theologian, pointed out: the Christians of the future are either mystics or they are not Christians.

People used to say that the life of a Christian takes place between the Church as the temple and the square or marketplace. In the temple, the Christian is in prayer and contemplation of God and of himself; in the marketplace, the Christian is living out his faith in charity and love of neighbour. Even contemplative monks who devote much time in prayer "Orat", also devote much work to God, "Laborat".

Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labour we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you.

This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.  2Thessalonians 3: 6-13

For St. Paul, there are no professionals of prayer or of proclaiming the Gospel. This must be the job of everyone. He himself, as the text states, worked and earned his living as a tent maker; he lived neither at the expense of prayer nor of evangelization. He lived therefore contrary to the traditional division of social classes in the Middle Ages, in which the clergy prayed, the nobles protected the people, and the people worked to support the clergy and the nobles. Even during the Middle Ages, those who were very dedicated to prayer like the Benedictine and Cistercian monks, were already working not only for their own sustenance, but also for the sustenance of the neighbouring villagers, to which they taught agricultural practices.

If the Annunciation evokes "loving God above all things" then the Visitation evokes "loving one's neighbour as oneself"
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when your rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the time was coming when God will be worshipped neither on Mount Gerizim where Jacob had built a Bethel shrine, nor in Jerusalem where Solomon had built the temple. God is to be worshipped in spirit and truth. And elsewhere in scripture, Jesus even says that anyone who wants to pray, is to go to his room. In prayer we exercise our love for God. It is true that we love him at all times, but prayer is the manifestation of this love that we feel at all times.

To all intents and purposes, the Creator always knows more about the creature than the creature knows about himself. Also, the Creator loves the creature more than the creature loves himself. The Creator knows everything about the creature, his past, present and future, therefore better than the creature, God can defend the creature’s interests.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  Matthew 10:37

All the creature can and must do is to surrender himself into the hands of the Creator, just as a toddler without any hesitation throws himself into arms of his father. Thus, we can understand this classic text of love of God, which is the creed, that every Jew recites when he wakes up in the morning. Love of God is above all things, above all people, total and absolutely exclusive, and above the love we have for ourselves.

God only loves those who love him
When you enter the home, give it your blessing. If it turns out to be a worthy home, let your blessing stand; if it is not, take back the blessing. Matthew 10: 12-13

Often in sermons, to get the attention of those who are half asleep, I throw a grenade in the middle of the audience by saying, "God loves only those who love Him." Then those in the audience who consider themselves theologians object and say no, that God loves everyone equally, and even quote the Bible to me, that He makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust.

And it is true that in theory God loved Hitler as well as Francis of Assisi. However, the lives of these two men could not have been more different; if the two had the same quantity and quality of God's love, why were they so distinct? That is because Francis accepted God's love, he echoed it by loving God back; Hitler did not. The sun, before reaching our planet and warming and illuminating it, passes through the outer space where the temperature is minus 300 degrees Celsius. Why? Because it is empty, there is nothing in it that echoes and touches that light and that heat. The only way to echo God's love is to love him back.

"Love is paid with love" – As scripture says, God loved us first and he always loves us, but if I do not echo His love in me, it is as if He does not love me. Only with love can we echo God's love in us. To love, either we respond with love or we are indifferent to love. Therefore, although in theory God loves everyone equally, only the ones who accept this love, only those who are open to God's love, feel the effects of this love. The act of accepting God's love, of being open to God's love, is loving God.

As the scripture reading quoted above (Matthew 10: 12-13) suggest, the blessing bounces back to you when it is not well received. So it is with the love of God that does not encounter a heart to receive and acknowledge Hi s love.

To Love and to be Loved
To love and to be loved is the first human need, after physical ones. There is no human life without love; to live is to love. All our life we will have this need. Therefore, because it is a human need and because there is no authentic human life without love, to love is both a duty and a right.

As a need, it is inherent in human nature and in the dignity of the human person; all human beings have the right to be loved and the duty to love. As children, the priority is to be loved, for it is by being loved unconditionally that we learn to love unconditionally. As adults, the priority is to love; if an adult has as priority to be loved more than to love, he is not a mature adult. He is one of those types of adults that we see in soap operas, who use a thousand and one tricks to gain someone's esteem and do little or nothing to love someone.

At the educational level, love is a duty of adults toward children, an inherent and innate right of children in relation to adults. Outside the educational sphere, the need to love and be loved remains for the rest of one’s life, so it is always both a right, even if we do not claim it, and a duty, even if we do not exercise it.

But God will continue to ask us "where is your brother?" (Genesis 4:9). To answer that we are not our brother's keeper is not an answer that satisfies God or our conscience. It is also worth remembering that what matters at the Last Judgment is the same as what matters in life: love. If you have loved then you have lived; If you did not love then you did not live, you were a living dead, that is, the body was alive, but the soul was already dead. With the death of the body, you return to the nothing from which God created you to make something out of you; but you did not collaborate with His grace.

Conclusion: If in the Annunciation Mary manifests her love for God, then in the Visitation to her cousin she manifests her love of neighbour. In these two Joyful and Marian mysteries, the life of a Christian is summarized.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC