When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped 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 leaped for joy. (
Luke 1: 41-44)
Click on Sunday's Lessons to review all of the Lessons and Carols readings. Is someone coming to visit you for the holidays? Are you headed out of town to visit someone? A visit with a loved one is a special moment indeed, albeit, some families adhere to Benjamin Franklin's "Fish and Guests"
rule. Spending time at the movies, or getting a hotel room from the hosts/guests during an extended visit works within my particular family dynamics. Elizabeth, on the other hand, she was thrilled to see Mary and was happy to have her stay for an extended period of time. God love them, my family as well as Elizabeth & Mary!
I mentioned last Sunday that we sometimes have to
fight for joy in our lives. All of Elizabeth's body, including her unborn baby John, "lept" when Mary came into her presence with the unborn Christ-child in her womb. Together, in the midst of all of the uncertainties that accompanied their pregnancies and all the chaos of the time that they lived in, they lovingly embraced the moment when God united them and their offspring in a truly incarnational, embodied way. My guess is that they spent more than three days with one another - some of the time in prayer, other times just doing the daily things that expectant mothers do, then and now. Joy became the focus of their lives instead of cautionary fear.
Brother
Curtis Almquist, SSJE
writes:
Joy requires our saying "yes" to life, to the life we've been given, to the hand we've been dealt. Probably many of us have woken up one day to discover that the script we've been handed in the play of life is not the part we thought we were trying out for. It seems to me that joy requires a deep willingness to accept how little of our life is actually within our own control. It's an acknowledgment and an acceptance that God will be God: that it is God's world on God's time and that we are God's creatures and that God is at work according to God's good pleasure. (2011, para. #4)
Life is like this. It's not within our control much of the time. It's loaded up w/ choices very much dependent upon the visits and various forms of fish that come our way. It's also about how we yearn and become more willing to accept God's providence in an embodied and incarnational manner (with our limbs, stomachs, hands, feet, heart, and all the other physical aspects of who we are).
Let's get a little "touchy" in the next few days. Elizabeth and Mary "felt" God in an especially intimate and life-giving way in the time before their sons were born. Maybe that's how we should be in these final days of Advent, especially when much of the world around Elizabeth, Mary, Jesus, and us is unaware of the wonderful event that is about to happen. God's gift of everlasting love will be visiting us in the form of a little baby, born in a town far, far away from where we presently are and yet so close as well. He's going to be around for much longer than three days and it's really, really worth it to welcome him into the hearts and hearths of our homes.
5 Days and counting.
Blessings Along The Way, Jim+
