As we approach Christmas, the Church looks to Mary. In today’s Gospel, we hear of the Visitation. After the angel Gabriel departs from her, and the Word becomes flesh in her womb, Mary hastens to see her pregnant cousin Elizabeth.
But Elizabeth is awestruck. “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me (Lk 1:43)?” Here, Elizabeth recognizes three things. First, Mary is the Mother of God: “the mother of my Lord”. Mary is the God-bearer, Theotokos. God chooses to ask for Mary’s cooperation in His plan of salvation, to which she says “yes”. She obeys the will of the Father with her fiat, allowing the Word to dwell within her (Lk 1:38).
Second, Elizabeth recognizes the Lord enters the world. God comes to her in Mary. The pagan Greco-Roman world rightly understood we can never reach the eternal Good by our merits. Our sins create a chasm between us and God. However, Jesus obeys the Father’s will and crosses the chasm by being born: “a body you have prepared for me” (Hb 10:7). Contrary to the Greeks and Romans, God is not a distant thought. God is intimate. God makes Himself little so we can embrace Him.
Third, the Lord “comes to me”. The Lord seeks a personal relationship. God takes things personally. My sins grieve Him; my sins push Him away. And so, the Word, in being the visible “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), wants to enter into the lives of every single human soul. St Therese of Lisieux says: “Our Lord does not come down from heaven every day to lie in a golden ciborium. He comes to find another heaven dearer to Him – the heaven of our souls”.
So when next He comes in glory, let us not be caught with closed doors. Let us recognize that the Word-made-flesh wants to live in us just as He lived in Mary. Jesus wants us to be “another heaven”, a holy soul that leaves the door open to Him by saying “yes” to God in every aspect of our lives. Let us stand by our open doors and say to Him, “O Jesus, living in Mary, come, and live in your servant”. Then, when He comes at the end of time, we too can be like Mary, blessed for believing that what was spoken by the Lord would be fulfilled (Lk 1:45).
Joseph Yuson – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta