Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today's Mass Readings

Today, we celebrate the feast of the Visitation, when Mary went to visit her relative Elizabeth, who the angel Gabriel had told Mary was also with child.

As with all Marian feasts, the Church’s eye remains fixed on Jesus, celebrating Mary as God’s servant because she embraced her role in God’s plan of salvation. Indeed, we notice in Luke’s gospel that from the very beginning of the visitation story, the focus is on Jesus: it is the “blessed fruit of [Mary’s] womb” (Lk 1:42) that causes John the Baptist to leap in Elizabeth’s womb (Lk 1:41). John will prepare the way for Jesus and he is excited by the Savior even in utero! In Mary’s prayer of praise to God, the Magnificat, she calls herself God’s “lowly servant” (Lk 1:48) and exclaims joyfully God’s vindication of the lowly by casting down “the mighty from their thrones” (Lk 1:52). All of this God does by sending Jesus into the world.

What are we to make of these references to the exaltation of the poor over the rich? This inversion of the seeming order of things? We get some help from today’s first reading from Zephaniah. The passage immediately proceeding the first reading in book of this prophet is the promise of a “faithful remnant” – a theme throughout the prophetic writings. The remnant is small group loyal to God who rely heavily upon God because they have neither possessions, nor power. It is they who can rejoice and will be saved by God.

Mary’s great prayer makes sense precisely in this prophetic context. She locates herself of this poor remnant, loyal to God. Jesus the Savior has come as God has promised throughout the ages (cf. Lk 1:55). He has come to upset the tyranny of the rich over the poor and the powerful over the powerless. He has come to turn this order upside down.

What is it that we are doing, as disciples of Jesus, the Savior, to continue his work of vindicating the poor and the powerless? In honor of the Feast of the Visitation, let us raise a dual prayer to God. 1) A prayer of joy for the saving work God brings about through His Son Jesus. 2) A prayer of repentance for those times that we have contributed to the disturbingly widening gap in our country (not to mention our world) between the rich and the poor.

- Tim Gabrielli