To the Band of Brothers: May 30, 2024

On Friday, we celebrate the feast of the Visitation. It commemorates the day when the Blessed Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. The story is told in the gospel of St. Luke (1:39-56). After announcing to Mary she had been chosen to be the mother of God’s Son, the Angel Gabriel breaks the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy as evidence of God’s potential. Elizabeth was old and barren, but, as the Angel said, “nothing will be impossible for God” (v. 37). Soon after, Mary heads out for the visit.

It is important to note this “chisme” (“gossip”) about Elizabeth, coupled with Mary’s willingness to always obey God, motivated the Blessed Mother to give her “fiat” or “yes” to God. The gift of the fetus in Elizabeth’s womb helped seal the deal. It is no wonder the Blessed Mother took off in haste to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin. In part, it was to share in Elizabeth’s joy and offer a helping hand, but also to find in her a trusty and understanding confidant with whom Mary could share this exchange with the Angel and miraculous conception. Think about it, who would believe Mary’s cockamamie story of the Angel? Her parents? Joseph? Elizabeth.

But is there more to the visit than meets the eye? Moreover, why would the Church dedicate a whole day and liturgy to it? It can’t simply be to demonstrate the charitable side of Mary who insists on staying with her cousin throughout the rest of her pregnancy. We know Mary to be uber-charitable in her faultless disposition to the Father’s will. No one who is selfish expresses such quick surrender to the inconvenient, life-altering, and, even, dangerous petition of God. There’s got to be more to this than just that.

A deeper understanding of the Visitation reveals how profoundly theological it is and helps expose how deeply it is rooted in the Old Testament. It is one of thousands of examples of the New Testament and the revelation of Jesus Christ already found in the Old Testament. You just have to look for it. Let me explain.

The Virgin Mary, with a newly conceived Jesus in her womb, travels in haste 75 miles from Nazareth to a town in the hills of Judah (Ein Karem). According to Google Maps, that’s a 33-hour walk or 28-hour donkey ride (I guessed at that number because Google Maps doesn’t have a “donkey” travel option). To put it in better perspective, it’s like walking from Miami to Tavernier, just harder because of the mountains, unpaved roads, and bandits. When she arrives and greets Elizabeth, the baby in her womb leaps for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. Elizabeth goes on to exclaim, “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me” (Luke 1:43)? Mary, then, responds with a beautiful song we now call the “Magnificat.” Mary spends three months with Elizabeth before returning home.

Okay, now let’s look at 2 Samuel 6:1-12. Written in 975 BC (over 1,000 years before Jesus and the gospels!), it tells the story of when the Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant to King David. Israel’s enemies had stolen it during a raid and the Israelites were totally distraught about it. This was the sacred vessel God gave specific orders to build in gold and cedar wood to safeguard three important things: the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the leftover manna from the desert, and the staff of the priest Aaron (Exodus 25:16, 16:33-34, Numbers 17:8, Hebrews 9:4).

Out of extreme fear of offending the God of the Israelites, the Philistine authorities sent it back. When King David heard about this, he went to where it was. It was dropped off in a house in a town in the hills of Judah (connection #1). When the King arrived in the ark’s presence he exclaimed, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me” (2 Samuel 6:9 – connection #2)? The story tells us the ark stayed in the house of Obed-edom for three months (connection #3). Then, as King David brings the ark back to Jerusalem, he jumps and dances with joy as it enters the holy city (connection #4).

This story in the second book of Samuel is a precursor to the Visitation story in Luke. Any faithful Jew at the time would have made the connection automatically. In fact, they (and we) could take it a step further. The contents of the Ark of the Covenant are a precursor of Jesus himself: the tablets of the Ten Commandments because Jesus is the lawgiver (“I give you a new commandment,” “this is the greatest commandment,” etc.), the manna because Jesus is “the bread of life” (John 6:22-59), and the staff of the priest Aaron because Jesus is the “eternal high priest” (Hebrews 7).

If the contents of the ark are a precursor of Jesus, then the Ark of the Covenant itself is a precursor of Mary. And why not? The detailed specifications of God’s instructions for the construction of the Ark of the Covenant found in Exodus 25:10-22 are an echo to the detailed specifications of the Blessed Mother found throughout the Scriptures and tradition of the Catholic Church. While the Israelites used gold, precious metals, and types of wood resistant to decay or insect damage, God used the Immaculate Conception and Mary’s perpetual virginity to construct the perfect “ark” for His Son. Even the two golden angels that hovered over the lid of the ark with their wings spread out and forward (for a visual watch, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) resemble the scene of the Angel Gabriel over Mary as he announced to her the message of God.

See, there is so much more to the feast day of the Visitation than meets the eye. While it is not a holy day of obligation, maybe it’s a day you can sit with your family, read the story in Luke and then pray a rosary together. There is nothing like prayer to help bring the academic year to a close and issue in the summer break. There is nothing like Mary to bring us closer to Jesus.