VI. The Feast of the Visitation

" Intravit in domum Zacharise, et salutavit Elizabeth " (St. Luke i. 40).

The events of to-day's mystery bring before the faithful in a peculiar manner the fact that our God is a hidden God, and that His power works in the soul in a secret and impenetrable manner. Four people are concerned in the occurrence we are celebrating: Jesus and Mary; St. John, and his mother St. Elizabeth. Now, it is most remarkable that of all these sacred personages the only one who seems to perform no particular action is the Son of God Himself. Elizabeth, enlightened from on high, acknowledges the Blessed Virgin's dignity and humbles herself deeply before her: " Whence is this to me? " ^ John, even within Elizabeth's womb, feels his Divine Master's presence, and shows his joy in a wonderful way: he " leaped for joy "? Mary, marvelling at the great effects of Divine Omnipotence in herself, exalts the holy name of God and declares His munificence in her behalf, with her whole heart. But all this time Jesus Himself, hidden beneath His Mother's breast, gives no sensible sign of His presence. He, who is the cause of the whole mystery, takes no active part in it.

Strange as this may seem, it is not really surprising. Our Lord here hides His power intentionally, to show us how He is the invisible force that moves all things without moving Himself, and directs all things without showing His Hand. Hence, we shall find that though He may seem to be passive on this occasion His influence is fully apparent in the actions of the rest, whose movements are really all inspired by Him alone.

One of the greatest mysteries of Christianity is the holy union that the Son of God forms with us, and His secret way of visiting us. I am not speaking here of those special communications with which He now and then honours chosen souls: they must be left to the teaching of spiritual books and spiritual directors. Besides such mysterious intercourse as this, there are the visits paid by the Son of God every day to the faithful soul; interiorly by His Holy Spirit and the inspirations of grace; exteriorly by His Word, His sacraments, and above all by the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist. It is of great consequence to all Christians to know what their feelings ought to be when Jesus Christ visits them; and the Gospel of to-day appears to furnish a distinct instruction on the subject. If we would thoroughly enter into its meaning, however, we must notice that whenever the Son of God comes to man He causes these successive movements to take place within him. The first thing He does is to inspire the soul with an overpowering sense of His Majesty, which fills it with awe and makes it fear and tremble at the thought of its own baseness — counting itself quite unworthy of His favours. But God cannot stop short here; for if this first feeling lasted the soul would never dare to approach Him; and therefore He causes the second movement, which consists in an intensity of holy desires, producing a longing in the soul to rise up and come near to its Saviour. Then, by-and-by, comes the third and most perfect operation of grace: — namely, the full answer to these ardent wishes in the complete triumph of God's own peace within the heart, as the Apostle describes it: Pax Christi exuUet in cordibus vestris} All who are deeply experienced in spiritual things know that grace makes progress in their souls by these three degrees: — that it prepares them by humility, draws them on by ardour, and at last makes them perfect by possession of that Peace of Christ which passeth all understanding.

If we study the incidents of Mary's visit to Elizabeth we shall find all these states of soul clearly represented by the characters that appear before us, and who all speak and act through the secret inspiration of Jesus.

First, then, for the Christian soul to feel a humble movement of real abasement when her Creator visits

^ Coloss. iii. 15.

her — to offer Him the tribute of acknowledging her own littleness — is but just and right. This is why the first thing that God does when He comes to us by grace is to put into our hearts a feeling of religious fear that makes us, as it were, draw back from Him at the mere thought of how little we are worth. Thus, we read in St. Luke's Gospel that St. Peter had no sooner recognised the Divinity of Jesus Christ, by His miraculous works, than he threw himself then and there at His feet and cried: " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord! " ^ So, again, that devout centurion whom Jesus wished to honour by a visit, being taken by surprise at such goodness could only express his feelings by acknowledging himself unworthy: Domine non sum dignus? And what do we find corresponding to these feelings in the passage of Scripture that we have specially to study now? We learn that at the very first sight of Mary, and the first sound of her voice, her cousin Elizabeth — having learnt the holy maiden's dignity, and seeing by faith the God Whom she bears within her — is filled with astonishment and confusion, and cries out "whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? "

Now, we ought to engrave the example of humility and respect given by these words of Elizabeth deeply on our own hearts; and we can only do this by trying to enter thoroughly into the motives that compelled

1 Luke V, 8. 2 Matt. viii. 8.

her to humble herself in this way. Examining the words carefully, and reflecting on them, we find two separate thoughts underlying them: one thought concerning what Elizabeth already knew, and one concerning something she did not know. She saw that the Mother of her Lord had come to visit her — she recognised in her the one " blessed among women," as she herself was shortly to proclaim — and keenly felt the great honour done to her, and the impossibility of sufficiently acknowledging such an act of courtesy and friendship from one so great as Mary; and so the words Mater Domini mei explain her first motive for humbling herself profoundly before her young cousin. But if Elizabeth was fully alive to the honour bestowed on her by this visit, she was perfectly ignorant of its cause; and herein lay the second ground of her self-abasement, for she could see absolutely nothing in herself worthy of such a favour. That the Blessed Virgin had hastened over the hill-country to see her was a fact; but why she should have taken the journey at such a moment for the sake of one who could think of no claim on her condescension was an overpowering mystery to Zachary's holy wife, and she could only express the wonder it caused her by saying: unde hoc? — whence could such an entirely gratuitous act of condescension proceed? Not understanding it, all she could do was to make an offering to Christ, as He came to her with Mary, of a humbled heart with a confession of her inability to do more.

In short, all St. Elizabeth's thought, on an occasion that might well have caused self-complacency in a heart that contained the least vanity or pride, was that first she possessed nothing by which she could make due return for the honour thus shown to her, and that secondly she in nowise deserved it. And what other motives than these can any of us have for serving our God in fear, and rejoicing with trembling in His presence? For who so poor and who so unworthy as we, from both our natural condition and our own sins? Therefore, when God deigns to look upon us, we can but learn from Elizabeth how to reverence His supreme greatness by fully recognising our own nothingness, and to acknowledge His benefits by confessing our unworthiness.

There is another thought that will greatly help to make this feeling a reality and not a mere matter of words. When men receive favours from one another, no matter how great an inequality there may be between the one who confers and the one who receives a benefit or honour, nevertheless both are but creatures; and consequently the higher of the two, be he great as he may, must have some limit to his greatness which prevents his superiority from being absolute, because it is common to both: for what creature is without limitations? Hence no human being, conferring honours on a fellow-man, can feel that the recipient of his favours is so utterly beneath him as to have no claim whatever on his condescension. But not so with God. Between Him and His creatures there can be absolutely no equality. He is solitary and supreme in greatness: the only Being to whom we can say: "Lord, who is like to Thee?^ Glorious in holiness, terrible and praiseworthy, doing wonders "; ^ the only One Who is singular and unapproachable in all things. If, then. He is so majestically great, woe be to those who vain-gloriously lift their proud heads before Him; for He will put such mighty ones down from their seat. But blessed be the humble souls who cry with the prophet, when they feel the touch of grace, " What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest Him? " ^ Because they hide themselves, His face shall enlighten them; because they draw back through reverence. He will seek them out; because they fall at His feet. His Spirit of Peace shall rest upon them.

Once more: — the visit that so honoured and overwhelmed Elizabeth had not been sought by her: part of the very honour consisted in the fact that Mary had paid it of her own accord, and had thus forestalled her cousin in respect. Wonderful to relate, our God treats us. His poor creatures, in the same way. Whether the sinner who needs converting, or the just who is called to a higher life and the way of perfection, be concerned, He alike comes without waiting for us to ask Him. We are often not thinking of Him speci-

^ Ps. xxxiv. 10. 2 Exod. xv. 2. ^ Ps. viii. 5.

ally at all — we may have even actually forgotten Him; but He seek^ us out — goes before us — or, as sacred language has it, "prevents" us: we feel and know His grace, suddenly present with us, as the Baptist knew it in his mother's womb, when we have done absolutely nothing to call it down.

There is, then, but one thing to be done in face of the unspeakable graciousness of the Creator: — that same thing which won the primacy of the Church for Peter, the first place as preacher for Paul, and the oflfice of Precursor to Christ Himself for Elizabeth's son: — to humble ourselves as deeply as we know how, at sight of God's goodness and our utter unworthiness. When we have done this, and done it too with such genuine self-abasement that we feel actually afraid in God's presence, and inclined to draw back at His approach, there should gradually rise within us a quite other feeling. The faithful soul who has clearly seen her own lowliness goes on to experience a pure transport of longing which impels her to seek union with her God. This assertion may sound presumptuous or unreasonable, as a sequel to such thoughts of God's immeasurable distance from man as I have been uttering; but it is true; and we are actually bound to believe that we poor creatures may raise our desires even so high as to union with our Maker. In a former sermon I used an expression of Tertullian's to set forth in strong terms the supreme solitude and aloofness of God. I have now to dwell on His attribute of Goodness, which is just as inconceivable as His Greatness, and which brings Him near to us; and to express this I will use some words uttered by St. Gregory Nazianzen, surnamed " the Theologian " by the Greeks, on account of his lofty conceptions of the Divine Nature.

This great man, after calling on the whole world to desire God because of His infinite Goodness which loves to pour itself forth, and after dwelling fully on the subject, concludes thus: — " This God longs to he longed for: He thirsts, if you will but believe it, in the midst of His abundance. But for what does the Supreme Being thirst? It is that men may thirst for Him: sitit sitiri. Infinite as He is in Himself, and filled with His own riches, we can nevertheless do Him a favour — and how? By wishing Him to do us one; because He is more ready to give than others are to receive." ^

Divine Goodness may indeed be likened to a clear-flowing stream which seems to beg of the passers-by one thing only: — to stop and drink, or cleanse and refresh themselves in its waters. In like manner the nature of God, which can never grow or lessen because of its fulness, may be said with all reverence to lack but one thing, which is that we should come and draw from It the waters of Eternal Life, whose inexhaustible source it is. Thus St. Gregory is justified in saying that our Creator thirsts for our desires, and receives

^ Orat. xi., torn, i., p. 657.

as a benefit the power we bestow on Him of doing good to us.

This being so, it is insulting His bounty not to long to be the recipients of It. The transports of St. John within his mother's womb are caused by longing. He sees that his master has come to visit him, and he would fain go forth to receive Him. Holy love and ardent desires impel him to try to break his bonds by an impetuous movement. But he desires liberty for one thing only — that he may fly to his Saviour; and feels the restraint of his prison merely because it keeps him from doing so.

We have therefore good reason for invoking the holy Baptist as our helper in learning to long ardently for the Saviour of souls. He was appointed to prepare His ways, and his special ministry on earth was to make Jesus Christ be fervently desired by men. Another St. John has clearly explained this mission in his Gospel, and we should carefully attend to his words: " There was a man sent from God whose name was John: this man was not the light, but he came to bear witness of the light ": — that is, of Jesus Christ, " the Light that enlighteneth every man that Cometh into the world ".^ This seems a strange way of speaking: to say that St. John the Baptist, who is not the light, should discover to us Jesus Christ Who M the Light Itself. Still it is the truth — as the Gospel goes on to say in the case of Our Lord — that our

1 John i. 8, 9.

spiritual eyes often fail to see the light that is shining brightly in our midst, until some lesser light shows it to us. St. Augustine draws out an analogy between this kind of spiritual blindness and our physical sight, which he says " takes a torch to look for the daylight" •} that is, which is often so weak that it needs a feeble light, such as it can easily bear, to prepare it for the glare of noon: and this especially if the eye has been for a time altogether excluded from light. St. John was raised up to lead men, who had lost the light of truth, to the knowledge of Christ; and he was to do this by acting as a torch, that should first attract them by its own lesser brightness, then make them wish for greater light, and so gradually guide them into the full blaze of day.

This being the work of the Precursor, he is to begin it from the first moment that the Master, Whose way he is to prepare, comes near him. This is why Jesus gives no sensible sign of His presence on this visit, but leaves it to be proclaimed by the miraculous movement of the unborn child at His approach. As the rising sun shows his splendour on the clouds before he appears himself, so Our Lord first calls our attention to His coming by the light and warmth He sheds on St. John, whose instant turning to the Sun of Justice as He feels His rays is intended as a call to us to rise up and go to meet our God by holy desires,

^ In jfoan. Tract, ii,, n. 8,

The special office of St. John, then, on the great occasion of Mary's visit to his mother, is to show, by his eager response to the hidden influence of his Saviour, how the humble soul that has seen and felt the light and touch of grace should trust absolutely to the Love that has come to seek it out, and should return It by confidently forming the most ardent longings for union with its Maker. We, who have the unspeakable happiness of possessing that wondrous mode of union with Christ, the Holy Eucharist, should blush indeed at our frequent backwardness to take advantage of such a gift. How poor and feeble our desires appear by those of David! He knew his Redeemer only by expectation, but could yet cry out: " My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God — when shall I come and appear before the face of God? " ^ Would we but realise our privilege, and hunger and thirst for this Divine Food as we ought — counting nothing of value compared to our union with Jesus — He would speedily satisfy our longings by that Peace which Mary herself typifies on the Feast we are celebrating. She, indeed, must be in perfect peace; for, whilst all those who greet her arrival are but receiving the grace and call of Jesus Christ through her, she actually possesses Him. He lies beneath her heart; and the intense peace and joy that this gives her she pours forth in her glorious hymn. "My soul," she cries, on hearing Elizabeth's greeting, "doth magnify the ^ Psalm xli.

Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour! " ^

Now, if we study the Magnificat carefully, we shall find that its words throughout appear especially intended to fill our hearts with love for the Peace bestowed by God. For this marvellous Canticle first shows what is the only real principle of Divine Peace in the soul; then it goes on to declare the destruction of all things that can oppose or destroy its reign; and lastly — lest weak souls should grow discouraged or doubtful from finding the complete triumph of grace delayed till the next world — the hymn ends with the consoling reminder of God's fidelity to His promises which is to keep our hearts in peace by strengthening our trust.

Mary sets forth the true Principle of Holy Peace — its only real cause in the soul — when she tells us why her spirit rejoiced: " because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid". It is because God has looked upon her, because He has deigned to cast His eyes upon His humble servant and to consider her, that she is in peace. This " look " cast upon His creature by the Creator, this showing of His Divine countenance, has indeed always been the cause of the just man's peace; and in Holy Writ God is described as looking upon His people in two separate ways: with the Look of favour and benevolence,^ and the Look of help and ^ Luke i. 46, 47. 2 Psalm xxxii. i8.

protection.^ Now Mary, who has had greater grace than any other Creature bestowed on her, and who possesses Christ in a manner that no one else can possess Him, shows by the next words of her Hymn that God has regarded her in both these ways; for she says that He Who is mighty has "done great things " in her — which is looking upon her with great favour; and that He has " showed might in His arm" — which is bestowing on her the Look of help and protection: that is, protection from all spiritual evil by driving away from her (as we have seen that He did in her Conception) the curses consequent on sin. Such was the manner in which God had shown His Face to the Blessed Virgin and had caused her heart to exult; and in like manner — with this doubly gracious Look — does He show It to all holy and innocent souls to whom He gives His own Peace. This is a hidden peace, as Jesus was hidden within Mary at Zachary's house: a peace that the world cannot understand, for it is driven away by its tumult to find a home in the calm and solitude of pure hearts. It is indeed impossible to describe, for it can be truly known only by experience. But wherever it may take up its abode — whether in chosen souls living a secular life, or in those within the cloister — it always has the same enemies; and those are the false peace and the false joys whose certain destruction by God Mary proclaims

' Psalm xxxii., 19, 20.

in the next part of her Canticle. She knows so well that the victory is to be with God in the end, that she declares — as the Just who look at God's side of things and not at the world's, always do — not that He will act by-and-by, but that He has, " scattered the proud," " put down the mighty," and " sent away the rich "; whilst He has correspondingly favoured the humble and the poor. This strange opposition between God and the World will go on as long as time shall last, and will show itself with regard to every person and thing: — what wins the favour and love of God being always the exact reverse of what pleases and satisfies the spirit of the World. But the true Children of Christ will not lose their peace of soul, nevertheless. They will despise, and even mock at, the apparent triumph of mere human ideas and worldly pomp and greatness, and will ever sing in their hearts the Canticle of God's real triumph. They will not forget that earth is but a place of exile, and the speech of its inhabitants but a foreign language to those who know where is their true Country; and hence their natural mode of expression will be the Songs of Zion, and not those of Babylon; and in the midst of tumult they will think thoughts of peace and not of affliction.

But, if their hearts should ever seem to fail them — if the time should seem long, and the universal triumph of Christ discouragingly delayed, so that their souls feel faint within them — then they will again listen to Mary and learn of her, as she closes her grand Magnificat with the fervent act of Faith in the Promises of her Maker: " He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy; as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed for ever ".