The Holy Spirit’s Work in the Visitation, Feast of the Visitation (translated), May 30, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of the Visitation (translated)
May 30, 2020
Zeph 3:14-18, Is 12:2-6, Lk 1:39-56

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• It’s a great joy, today, as we prepare for Pentecost tomorrow and thank God for the gift of the Easter Season that we are able to celebrate the patronal feast of your Convent and the model mystery of your ministry to pregnant women, the Visitation. Throughout the Easter Season, we ponder the reality of the presence of the Risen Jesus with us, helping us, as St. Paul tells on at the Easter Vigil, to experience a “newness of life,” and in the Visitation, we see the difference the presence of Jesus makes. During this Decenarium to the Holy Spirit that we have been making since the Ascension, we seek to grow in our awareness of, and docility to, the action of the Holy Spirit, his gifts and the fruit of his presence, and in the Visitation we see the impact he makes in the life of all of the principal characters. And so it is fitting that we look at the Visitation in a special way through the prism of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit helps people become aware of the presence of Jesus and respond.
• As we ponder the Mystery of the Visitation in the Holy Rosary every Monday and Saturday, we normally are drawn toward the five principal characters. The Holy Spirit impacts all five and his interaction with them can help us to learn how he seeks to help us relive part of the mystery more deeply.
• The first figure is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today’s scene is a continuation, a complement, of what happened at the Annunciation when, as St. Matthew tells us, “she was found with child through the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18) as a result of what St. Luke tells us that the Archangel Gabriel had said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore he who is to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). The prophet Isaiah had foretold that “the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon … the shoot that shall sprout from the stump of Jesse” (Is 11:1-2; 61:1) but here we see that the Holy Spirit’s descent upon Mary, and her miraculous virginal conception of that Shoot, is highlighted. God’s self-giving and Mary’s self-giving together in a spousal bond brings about the miracle. The Holy Spirit had already acted upon her in her Immaculate Conception. The cooperation between Mary and the Holy Spirit led to the incarnation and her response, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word,” (Lk 1:38) is already itself a fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit within her.  After the departure of the Angel, still overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary similarly departed with haste. The Archangel didn’t tell her to go. He didn’t even suggest it. But at the mere mention of Elizabeth’s being pregnant in old age, Mary went with alacrity to help her. This shows her enormous faith in everything the Archangel said, not merely that she was pregnant with the eternal Son of God but that her seemingly sterile elderly cousin was similarly pregnant. The two pregnancies were linked by the Angel, just as the two mysteries are interconnected. She shows us how the Holy Spirit impels us, together with Jesus, to charity, to go faithfully in haste to care for those in need. We also see how the Holy Spirit was influencing her prayer along the way, leading her to all truth, helping her through the gift of Understanding to synthesize revelation in what was happening in her life. What she pondered along the four day journey from Nazareth to Jericho to Jerusalem to Ein Karem of the great prophecies and praises of Old Testament heroines she wove together and applied to herself. And her soul magnified and spirit rejoiced in the Almighty God and all that he was doing for her in her humility such that every generation thenceforth would call her blessed. We don’t know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit helps us to cry out with praise to God the Father and we see how that happened in her immaculate heart. The same Almighty God has done great things for us and we, too, need to learn from Mary how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and rejoice in God!
• The second figure is St. Elizabeth. She, too, was docile to the Holy Spirit. She, too, it seems to me must have received a visit from the Archangel Gabriel because, while it was perhaps possible for her by feminine intuition to guess that Mary, her cousin, was pregnant, how could she ever have guessed that she was carrying not just the Messiah but her “Lord” unless she had been explicitly told? And when Mary showed up, she went out to meet her, praising her as blessed among women because of the blessed Fruit of her womb and because of her faith that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled. She also showed her great humility, confessing that she couldn’t believe it that the Mother of her Lord would come to her. St. John Paul II gave a beautiful catechesis in 1990 on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Visitation and he said, “Elizabeth experienced this work of the Holy Spirit in a particularly profound way as she met Mary. It was related to the mysterious destiny of the son whom she was carrying in her womb. … At the moment of the visitation when Mary crossed the threshold of Elizabeth’s house (and, with her, he who was already the ‘fruit of her womb’ crossed it too), that presence of the Holy Spirit was felt in an experiential way by Elizabeth. She herself bore witness to that in the greeting which she addressed to the young mother who came to visit her. … Elizabeth, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit,’ was introduced into the depths of the mystery of the coming of the Messiah. Within her the Holy Spirit worked a special enlightenment that found expression in the salutation she addressed to Mary. Elizabeth spoke as if she were participating in and witnessing the annunciation in Nazareth. In her words, she defined the essence of the mystery that was at work at that moment in Mary. … The text of Luke shows his conviction that the Holy Spirit was acting, enlightening and inspiring both Mary and Elizabeth. Just as the Holy Spirit helped Mary perceive the mystery of her messianic motherhood brought about within her virginity, so the Spirit gave Elizabeth the ability to discover him whom Mary was carrying in her womb. She discovered what Mary was called to be in the economy of salvation: the ‘mother of the Lord.’ And the Spirit gave her the inner energy which prompted her to proclaim what she had learned ‘in a loud voice’ with a kind of enthusiasm and joy which are also the result of the Holy Spirit. The mother of the future preacher and baptizer in the Jordan attributed that joy to the baby whom she had been carrying for sixth months in her womb: ‘The infant in my womb leaped for joy.’ Mother and son were united in a kind of spiritual symbiosis, by which the exultation of the baby almost infected her who conceived him. Elizabeth broke out into that shout to express the joy which she profoundly shared with her son.”
• The third figure is Zechariah. We remember what the Archangel Gabriel had said to him when he met Zechariah in the temple and announced that Elizabeth would conceive and bear a Son. Gabriel said, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (Lk 1:15-16). Zechariah at this time was mute, but he was paying attention to everything, listening and pondering the dialogues between Mary and Elizabeth, and he was able to see the fulfillment of that promise before his very eyes. Zechariah shows us about the need for contemplative silence to appreciate what God is doing, something that can lead us to our own canticle of praise, like his famous Benedictus, when we open up our mouths and speak with the power of the Holy Spirit.
• The fourth figure is St. John the Baptist. St. John was filled in the womb with the Holy Spirit together with his mother and leaped. He jumped for joy. He shows us how the Holy Spirit seeks to fill us with the fruit of joy at his presence, at the presence of Jesus, and the gift of God’s blessing. The same Holy Spirit who filled him filled us on the day of our baptism and seeks to bring that blessing to full fruition in our life, just as it did in the vocation and mission of St. John, who was united to Jesus precisely by that blessing.
• The fifth and last figure is the most important, Jesus. Even in his earliest stages of human life, at 3-4 days old, 8-16 cells of a blastocyst according to his human body, Jesus was blessing. He was blessing Mary even as a one-celled embryo. He was doing good. He was lifting up. He was making others leap for joy. St. John Paul II said about in 1990 in a catechesis on the Holy Spirit in the mystery of the Annunciation, “The words addressed to Mary during the annunciation indicate that the Holy Spirit is the source of holiness for the Son who is to be born of her. At the instant in which the Eternal Word becomes man, a unique fullness of human holiness is accomplished in the assumed nature, a fullness which goes beyond that of any other saint, not only of the old but also of the new covenant. This holiness of the Son of God as man, as Son of Mary, a holiness from the source rooted in the hypostatic union. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. He will continue to act in Christ to the point of crowning his masterpiece in the Easter mystery. This type of holiness is a result of the unique consecration about which Christ himself will speak explicitly. … That consecration (that is, sanctification) is linked to the coming into the world of the Son of God. As the Father sends the Son into the world by the power of the Holy Spirit …, so he consecrates this Son in his humanity by the working of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the author of the sanctification of all people. He is especially the author of the sanctification of the man conceived and born of Mary, as well as the sanctification of his most pure mother. From the very first moment of the conception of this man who is the Son of God, he received from the Holy Spirit an extraordinary fullness of holiness, in a measure corresponding to the dignity of his divine Person.” Jesus wants to communicate that holiness to us. Once we receive his blessing, then we’re called to bring that blessing to the world so that he can make others leap again, sending us out with Christ inside, just like Mary, to proclaim our Magnificat and take him to others.
• At this Mass, the same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary and helped her conceive Jesus, the same Spirit whom Gabriel promised Zechariah would fill John from the womb, the same Spirit who moved Elizabeth to cry out with  praise to Mary and John to leap, the same Holy Spirit that was upon Jesus, comes to us, to prepare us to enter into the mystery of Christ’s continuous incarnation and to send us out to bring Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to others, so that our spirits may magnify the Lord and their souls may leap for joy.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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