A Gathering of Prophets: Mary's Journey to Elizabeth
Advent 4, Year C; Luke 1:39-45(, 46-55)
Since love is a kind of movement, and there is no movement except towards something, when we ask what must be loved, we are asking towards what we ought to be moved.1
“In those days Mary set out…” This journey follows immediately on the story of the Annunciation. The distance from Galilee to the Judean hills is considerable, several days on foot, and upward to boot. This is not a stroll or an errand, but more like a trek. There is no reason given, no additional context, and no companion for the young woman either; the angel departs, and Mary just sets out on the road.
An unnamed imperative prescribes Mary’s demanding route. In Luke as much or more than in other Gospels, being on the way is always a theological and not just a spatial matter.2 This is more however than a version of the “journey” metaphor (or cliché) of some contemporary spirituality, but about the distances that must be travelled so that things may happen, and not least so that people can meet. The destination really is the destination, or the person who waits there.
This dynamic of people journeying and meeting applies to the whole chapter; while this is the only meeting in today’s passage, there are four places (1:28-29, 40, 41, 44) where “greetings” are exchanged. The work God is undertaking is of connecting people, of making them collaborators (or conspirators). Not only do these meetings continue, but the extended scene is full of prophetic recognitions and outbursts, as the character realize they are not only encountering each other but the promise of God that is about to erupt into human history.
The phrase translated in NRSV as “with haste” (v. 39) suggests urgency, and Mary’s interior state, not merely speed. She is driven by a force that, like her response to the angel’s message, is both very much her own yet also the work of the Spirit. The fact of the journey thus seems to be a necessary and serious consequence of what she has been told by Gabriel. Elizabeth is its goal, for now.
Mary’s need to see Elizabeth is of course related to the older cousin’s pregnancy, referred to as a sign by the angel (v. 36). Now a reciprocal sign occurs; as the fact of Elizabeth’s pregnancy was offered to Mary, now Mary’s news—although the means of its communication is never given— is received by Elizabeth, and by John himself in utero. While Mary’s and Elizabeth’s companionship is foregrounded, we understand that John’s connection with Jesus is also made, as “the child leapt in her womb” (v.41). So this becomes a meeting of four, rather than just of two.
The women’s encounter—including something we do not read today, that Mary stays three months—involves a familiar solidarity among mothers-to-be. Some readers have emphasized the importance of Elizabeth’s seniority and potential mentorship to Mary, whose journey then supposedly means she is seeking it out (granted that Elizabeth too is a new mother). Others put more weight on Mary’s stature as mother of the savior, and on her youth, imagining her as coming to offer help. In fact while the journey and the meeting are better understood as mutual support and joint action,3 rather than as asymmetrical, there is more here than that natural solidarity. Each of the two women has a unique role in the encounter, and each role is related to the son whose birth has been signaled.
The presence in this passage, or at least in the liturgy today, of the Magnificat may distract us from the fact that Elizabeth is the one “filled with the Spirit” here, and it is she who first exclaims “with a loud cry.” Luke is identifying her as a prophet. She raises her song of acknowledgement without explanation; the fact of Mary’s pregnancy seems to have been divinely revealed to her, along with its significance. John’s leap in the womb may be understood as the immediate means, a kind of embodied oracle. The child’s kick is an anticipated version of “prepare the way of the Lord,” hinting that Mary’s arrival is part of that journey into human life by the child Jesus that John will later proclaim to others.
While Mary’s song resounds down the ages in the prayer of the Church, Elizabeth also gives us a memorable piece, if not quite of liturgical then of devotional language, the core of the prayer “Hail Mary.” Elizabeth’s speech while briefer than Mary’s is also profound; it is the confession of Jesus’ identity, even before the appearance of the savior in the view of the world. While Gabriel had named him “the son of the Most High,” Elizabeth is thus the first human to acclaim Jesus as Lord.
Elizabeth’s last line is telling: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Some recent readings suggests ambivalence about Mary’s ”agency” in all this, but Elizabeth reaches her crescendo with the celebration of Mary’s faith that God could do in her something even more unlikely than what had happened to Elizabeth and John. Mary’s journey itself affirms the unlikely message of the angel; the trek is her embodied “yes.”
So when Mary erupts with her great song of praise in turn, it is a response not so much to Gabriel but to Elizabeth and her blessing; the Magnificat then is the theme song of the encounter between these two women prophets (and their prophetic offspring). Later the devout Simeon will also sing his inspired song, and Anna—the only one of these characters formally designated a prophet (2:36) will continue this chorus of divine praise that pervades the whole infancy narrative.
The Magnificat becomes the climactic moment of the meeting. Almost every line has an immediate biblical source, and of course the song of the other unlikely mother Hannah (1 Sam 2) is a very specific parallel. The use of the past tense throughout, all the causes for praise attributed to God spoken of as already achieved, is striking. The events these women are caught up in, and of which they are key actors, are completely coherent with the character of the God of Israel who has always “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” So while this is Mary’s song, it is not hers alone; in fact the implied singer is Israel itself, and Elizabeth here—and the two children—are in the chorus with her.
Mary’s curious journey is about this meeting, but is also a sign, a foretaste, of the meeting that is Jesus’ appearance with God’s people. It could be seen an example of how human life is experienced as journey or pilgrimage, yet Jesus has also made his way with her into the Judean hill country. More fundamentally then the journey is God’s own to us. The journey and the meeting are rehearsals for the time when, after John’s more public proclamations of joy and hope, the Lord’s people will know that he has come to be with them, and that they are blessed.
Augustine of Hippo, Eighty-Three Various Questions, 35.1
François Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1 - 9:50. Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002, 58.
Barbara E. Reid OP, and Shelly Matthews. Wisdom Commentary: Luke 1-9. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2021, 36-38.
Thanks Andrew. How had I never noticed that the Magnificat is all in the past tense?
I was struck by Elizabeth's response: astonished, humbled, and rejoicing that the mother of the Lord would come to her on her mountain. That, dare I say, God-in-utero has come to her, confirming all that she was told and was experiencing, confirming her as the first prophet to hail the messiah, as her own son would do some years later, in his own turn (although he, too, declared his recognition of the one greater than himself, while also in-utero).