Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today is the Visitation—the occasion on which Mary the Mother of God visited Elizabeth, who was carrying John the Baptist.

This event, and the subsequent story of the John leaping for joy in Elizabeth’s womb, is all part of the rich tradition of the Incarnation. In the midst of this episode, it is easy to be distracted by the features of the story and to forget that the reason for all of it—John leaping, the prophetic quality of this recognition, the miracle of two fetuses engaging in a process of recognition, Zechariah’s dumbness, the age of John’s parents when Elizabeth conceived, the miracle of Mary’s virginity, the mystery of Mary as a human “Mother of God”— is Christ himself. There might be few things as wondrous to contemplate as this: the God of all becoming a fetus.

We also contemplate the wondrous reality that God gave Mary the opportunity to become lowly, even a social outcast, to accept this call and to cooperate with his beautiful design for her life.

Arvo Pärt’s setting of Mary’s song from today’s reading (https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/daily-readings/2023-05-31) is a particularly powerful mediation on these themes:

Magnificat, Arvo Pärt (https://youtu.be/7WrP_9Jpfkc)

Yours in Christ,

—Justin