Visitation: A Ministry of Presence

As we celebrate today the Feast of the Visitation, my thoughts linger on the joy of today’s readings. Certainly the event of the Visitation was a joyful one. We hear Elizabeth sing. We hear Mary sing. Both women exclaim in song the profound joy that has overwhelmed them. So we have today the first part of the Hail Mary and the Magnificat because of this event.

The visitation was not just the Blessed Mother, now conceiving the child Jesus in her womb, dare to go up the mountains of Judea to visit her expecting relative, Elizabeth. If there was great joy in the event, it was because God has first visited His people. Prior to Mary’s journey, the Angel Gabriel came to her and announced to her that she would become the mother of Jesus. Her assent opened the floodgates of grace, as her womb became the New Temple where the Most High has chosen to dwell. Yahweh, the God worshipped at Sinai is no longer felt through manifestations of cloud, lighting and thunder. The God that worked wonders has chosen to come in flesh.

It was this holy presence inside the Blessed Mother that brought about the joy of the events. It was a presence welcomed by Mary but also moved her to go out of her way to visit a relative in a distant place. God’s presence in us is meant to be shared. If God is truly present in us, He fills us with great joy and peace, so much so that it overflows. Truly, deeply, profoundly happy people emanate a joy that shines through everything.

The Visitation then is the sharing of the presence of God by Mary. The Child in her womb caused John the Baptist, though still in the womb, to move with joy, as if dancing at the presence of his Lord. The Child in her womb overshadowed both women with the Holy Spirit that filled their hearts with joy and their mouths with songs.

The question for us today is how much do we make God present in the very places we live and move, and to the very persons we meet everyday?

The Holy Trinity

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 28:16-20.
The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

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Reflection

The Trinitarian mystery is the center, the deepest and most profound tenet of our Christian faith. It separates us from all other faiths and is the cause between the separation of the Jews and the early Christians. It is a mystery because although we can grasp the concept of it, we cannot fully explain and exhaust its richness, much like we know that there is such a thing as the Pacific ocean but we cannot imagine in our minds its full expanse and depth.

Profound though it is, Jesus revealed it to us, that God is not only Father, but He is also Son, and is also Spirit. It is a sublime truth not because it describes God's relationship to us but because among the three Persons in the Trinity we see the greatest truth of God. God is love. Within Himself love is alive and dynamic because a relationship of love requires more than one person.

The image of the Trinity, therefore, does not just speak of One God in Three Divine Persons, but above all, it speaks to us that God is a family. That is the best human analogy we have of the Trinity. As a Church, we cannot but humbly ruminate on this mystery as we grow in its truth.

The Spirit of Salvation

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 20:19-23.

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, "Peace be with you."
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained."

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Reflection

You can say that early Christians have a preoccupation with the first day of the week. The Resurrection happened on such a day. Now, even the appearance of the risen Jesus also fell on such a day. The first day of the week, of course, is Sunday. St. John the Evangelist, takes things a little bit farther, and to stress an important truth of faith, lumped all the events that we know of Easter, together in one day: the Resurrection, the appearances, and the giving of the Holy Spirit.

For St. John, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, signified in Jesus' breathing on the disciples, is the fruit of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. God acts as One. The Son and the Spirit working in unity with the Father for our Salvation. The breathing forth remembers the events of Creation, when the Spirit of God hovered over the primordial waters and when Yahweh breathed life into man. The great work of Salvation that begun in Creation is accomplished today. God, through the Son, did not only give us His flesh and blood, but now has given us the fullness of His Spirit.

Pentecost is the defining moment of Salvation when we are fully confirmed in the Trinity. We have not only become adopted sons and daughters of the Father, nor partakers of Jesus' Divinity in His Body and Blood, but now we have become Temples of the Spirit. Salvation is all about God taking us into Himself, uniting us into Himself, and loving us into Himself. The power, authority, and gifts that the Spirit showers upon us in the Church, is but natural consequence of our entry into God.