Today May 31

One of my favorite theologians, Frank Sheed, had a really cool point about this feast day and I would like to be able to quote it at length because it really points to something in Mary's character. Well, I can't find it now, but he said that the thing Mary reacted to at the Annunciation wasn't what we might have focused on: the fact that her cousin was expecting. She hurriedly set out on the -- wow -- four-day trip there. She stayed the full three months to help Elizabeth with not only the pregnancy but with birthing the baby. That's why it always bothers me that some preachers, on the slimmest of arguments, insist that Mary left before the birth of St. John. I also have a problem with St. Francis de Sales' (God bless him) description of Our Lady (on this Visitation Day): "It was a rough road for this weak and delicate Virgin." Rough enough, yes, but I doubt she was all that weak and delicate. Imagine toting five gallons of water on your head to and from the well each day; baking your own bread; spinning and weaving your own heavy bolts of cloth; making your own clothes; hoeing, planting and reaping your own garden; carrying your own kid around till he's two . . . c'mon! Okay, okay, the ideal of beauty in 17th-century France may have been "weak and delicate" but it wasn't the reality in first-century Judea!

The thing I find over and over again in the Scriptures is the concept of "fittingness" or "righteousness" -- as in "Why should I baptize you? If anything, you should be baptizing me." - St. John the Baptist. "Enough. Let us do so for the sake of righteousness." - Christ. I've heard this expression used in connection with both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption -- doubtless God need NOT have [created Mary without original sin or assumed her body and soul into heaven] but doubtless God DID . . . and it was fitting. Well, I think the same could be said for what is happening here. The Visitation, after all, is not just the meeting of the two women but the two (unborn) men. And according to St. John Chrysostom, it was the occasion of Our Lord's anointing of St. John the Baptist as prophet. Now, this was not absolutely necessary, but it was fitting. It was for the cause of righteousness. And St. John caused his mother to cry out (because, as the Scripture says, first he leaped in the womb and then:) "Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Testify, sister! Happy Visitation, everybody.