The Second Joyful Mystery: The Visitation

Eager­ness. That sin­gle word sums up this entire sto­ry for me, as well as the cen­tral chal­lenge that it sparks in my soul every time I reflect upon this mystery.

Mary learns that her female rela­tion Eliz­a­beth is expect­ing a child, despite a life­time of shame­ful “bar­ren­ness” for her and her hus­band. Mary is eager to share in the joy of this long-despaired-of event; she also wants to share her own joy with Eliz­a­beth (she has news of her own, after all). And so she grabs her purse and goes run­ning off over the hills all the way to Eliz­a­beth’s house.

And when Mary final­ly gets there (pos­si­bly out of breath from all that run­ning) Eliz­a­beth comes out of the house. She knows that Mary is already car­ry­ing Some­one very spe­cial inside her (the Holy Spir­it is giv­ing away every­one’s sur­pris­es in this sto­ry). So she hur­ries out, eager to greet Mary, and to meet Jesus.

Where in my life am I run­ning out to meet Jesus? Or where do I rush eager­ly to share the joy of my rela­tion­ship with Jesus with oth­ers? “Nowhere” serves as a pret­ty effi­cient answer to both of these queries. That can’t be a good thing.

Mary, kin­dle a fer­vent joy in my too-com­pla­cent soul. Help me to be like Eliz­a­beth, run­ning to meet Jesus when­ev­er He comes into my life.

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