The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Zephaniah 3:14-18 | Isaiah 12 | Luke 1:39-56
She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ (Luke 1:42-45)
That’s a huge amount of understanding on the part of Elizabeth, no doubt gifted her by the Holy Spirit. To behold her cousin as an ordinary woman, yet penetrate her dowdy exterior and fathom the wondrous gift of God that she was bearing in her womb, is remarkable indeed.
Why not work towards a deeper understanding of our faith, instead of sticking to the hour-a-week of Sunday Catholicism?
Why not take the time to really look at the people around us each day, to perceive their inner pain in their arguments with each other, the worldly concerns that line their faces, and the love that they exude despite all that, when they turn to their children?
Why not, on this sixth day of the Novena to the Holy Spirit, pause to ask the Holy Spirit to make wide and deep our perception of God’s eternal love, that we may see our fellow humans in a new light and treat them as our brothers and sisters?
Understanding, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, helps us to grasp the meaning of the truths of our holy religion. By faith we know them, but by Understanding we learn to appreciate and relish them. It enables us to penetrate the inner meaning of revealed truths and through them to be quickened to newness of life. Our faith ceases to be sterile and inactive, but inspires a mode of life that bears eloquent testimony to the faith that is in us; we begin to “walk worthy of God in all things pleasing, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
Come, O Spirit of Understanding, and enlighten our minds, that we may know and believe all the mysteries of salvation; and may merit at last to see the eternal light in Thy Light; and in the light of glory to have a clear vision of Thee and the Father and the Son. Amen.