Day 3: The Visitation

The third day of the Saint Andrew Christmas Novena turns to the second of the Joyful Mysteries: the Visitation. After the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin Mary, carrying the Eternal Word in her womb, traveled in haste to the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was herself in her sixth month of pregnancy with the future Saint John the Baptist. The Visitation is the first Catholic missionary journey, the first proclamation of the Incarnation to another soul.

Today's prayer (recite fifteen times)

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

Today's meditation

The Gospel of Saint Luke records the Visitation in chapter one, verses 39 to 56. Mary went with haste to a town of Judah and entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. At the moment of Mary's greeting, the unborn John the Baptist leaped in the womb of his mother, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth cried out with a loud voice: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" The greeting of Elizabeth ("Blessed are you among women") is the second portion of the Catholic Hail Mary, preserved in the prayer's text since the early medieval period.

Mary's response to Elizabeth's greeting is the Magnificat, the great Marian hymn that the Catholic Church has prayed every evening at Vespers for over fifteen hundred years. "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden..." (Luke 1:46-55). The Magnificat is the Catholic paradigm of the soul's response to the Incarnation: humility before the Lord, joy in His salvation, gratitude for the great things He has done, confidence in His mercy from generation to generation.

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask the Mother of God for the gift of being a bearer of Christ to others. Blessed Virgin Mary, you carried the Lord Jesus to your cousin Elizabeth and brought sanctification to her household. Through me, in my small way, may others encounter the Lord.

The Catholic devotional tradition has long observed that every Catholic family is called to be a household of the Visitation: a place where the love of Christ, carried by the Catholic faithful, becomes the cause of joy and sanctification for visitors and neighbors. Pray today for your own family in this regard.

Reflection

The Catholic theology of the Visitation contains a profound doctrine of the apostolate. Mary did not arrive at Elizabeth's house with a theological lecture or a liturgical service; she arrived with the Lord Jesus in her womb. Her presence alone, simply by carrying the Lord, was the source of Elizabeth's sanctification and of John the Baptist's first contact with the One whose way he would later prepare. The Catholic faithful, who carry the Lord in their souls by sanctifying grace and (when in the state of grace and after Holy Communion) by the substantial presence of the Eucharist, are themselves bearers of Christ in a way analogous to Mary.

The proper Catholic apostolate, in this Visitation key, is not principally the lecture or the argument but the carrying of Christ into the ordinary places of life: the workplace, the family meal, the neighborhood, the parish hall. The Catholic who arrives carrying Christ is, by that arrival, an instrument of grace.

Closing

Conclude with the Magnificat (the Marian hymn of the Visitation, prayed daily at Vespers), or with the Hail Mary.