Luke 1, 39

Mary set out and went with haste

Oh no! We’re not inviting Uncle Peter for Christmas are we? Don’t you remember what he did with the Christmas crackers last year?! Most of us are familiar with the upside and potential downside of having relatives over for Christmas. I’m not speaking from firsthand experience of course (never know who will read this!)!

Today in the gospel passage Mary visits her relative; her cousin, Elizabeth. Mary is compelled to share the joy and, I imagine, deep puzzlement of her most mysterious pregnancy. Mary therefore doesn’t keep the news to herself, she wants to share it with her family.

Our relatives, or whoever God has placed closest to us in our lives, are the ones we usually love the most and find the most challenging. We might not have chosen them ourselves, and that’s part of what is important about them. At a time when we make so many selective choices about who we are “friends” with, or who we “follow”, God still makes choices for us and we grow the most by accepting and embracing these choices. It is in these relationships that we, like Mary and Elizabeth, share and experience God. God is not up in the clouds, he’s in our relationships and encounters with others.

Mary had an advantage though. She worked on her inner-life. It says in Luke 2,19 that she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” In other words Mary prayed, meditated and reflected on life. Not because she wanted “me time” but because she wanted “God time.” This helped her to see all that was going on, and those God-chosen people in her life, through God’s eyes.