The Second Joyful Mystery

The Visitation

There are two ways to consider the visitation.  The first and most obvious is the blessed meeting between Mary and Elizabeth.  The Virgin Mother meets the Barren Mother.  Yet, there is a more subtile visitation.  Gabriel encourages Mary to visit her cousin and thus we can consider this visitation as ordained by the very will of God.  But why?  If the meeting for Mary and Elizabeth?  Yes, indeed, on every human level this meeting if for them.  Yet, it may just be that the meeting that God ordains is the encounter between these two great mothers' children.  There is something in the voice of Mary that carries a message to the child in the womb of Elizabeth.  There is a divine chain that can be seen.  From the mouth of God to Gabriel, from the mouth of Gabriel to Mary, and from the mouth of Mary to John the Baptist.  Mary is to John the Baptist as Gabriel is to her.  It is by her voice, now enlivened by the grace Christ in her womb that sanctifies the Forerunner in Elizabeth's womb causing him to leap with joy.  Tradition holds that at this very moment John the Baptist was cleansed from Original Sin.  Thus, he becomes the second person to reap the fruits of the Cross.  In this way Christ is born of the Immaculate Mary and is proclaimed by an Immaculate Herald.  Both the Blessed Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are images and types of Christian obedience.  They hear the call and without hesitation leap to serve the Lord of all for the sake of all.