Two Souls, One Promise
Michiel Peeters - After the Angel had told Mary she was pregnant, she traveled to her niece Elizabeth, about whom the Angel had told her that she was pregnant, too. Mary’s amazement, Mary’s joy for what had happened to her, what was happening to her, becomes, immediately, charity: she travels “in haste” to her niece who might need her help.
When Mary “entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth, [and] when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in [Elizabeth’s] womb.” This is the first moment that a human being, besides Mary, perceives, feels, and notices the presence of God who became a man, God’s presence in the flesh, Christianity. It’s the description of how each of us can perceive God’s presence in the flesh: God who comes to visit me and you. Let’s read this page carefully.
God has already entered this world: Mystery has been conceived in Mary’s womb. But Elisabeth doesn’t know it: in herself, in her heart, she has only the one thing every man and woman possesses, that he or she can choose either to follow or try to reduce: her infinite desire, her inexhaustible expectation.
This desire, this expectation of hers is, as it were, incarnated in the child Elisabeth is pregnant with: John the Baptist. In Dutch, being pregnant is called “in verwachting zijn,” to be “expecting.”
The child catalyzes, as it were, all the expectation the human heart is made of. But if we go to the bottom of it, if a woman would go to the bottom of her expectation, it’s not that she can expect her child to fulfill it: she urgently needs something that will fulfill both her child and herself! Pregnancy is an “incarnation” of our desire for happiness, but not its fulfillment! It makes our expectation deeper and more urgent!
So, full of expectation, Elisabeth hears Mary’s greeting. Now there is something in this greeting, some accent, which touches her deeply. It speaks to her expectation. Her desire is made for it: therefore, it reacts. “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb.”
This is what happens in what we call the “encounter.” This is why we are here. Not because of our good behavior, not because of our understanding of everything, but because we have run into a human company and heard an accent that touched us deeply, that touched and awakened the desire we carried with us. Maybe implicitly and intuitively, but something of this has happened, otherwise, we wouldn’t have moved, and we wouldn’t be here tonight.
But in order not to lose this exceptional event, a reflection, a judgment on what has happened, is needed: “Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit [changed profoundly by this encounter], cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’”
This judgment Elisabeth pronounces, is important. I often think: many see and are touched by a beauty present among us. But no judgment is pronounced. What is it I meet here? What brings those people together? What is the source of this accent that touches my heart? If we don’t arrive at a judgment, everything will remain sentimental, and therefore inevitably, in time, it will lose our interest. Not because it wasn’t true, but because we didn’t grasp its meaning. The encounter provokes a judgment.
And the judgment, in its turn, is the beginning of a road: a fascinating road to verify that judgment. As Elisabeth, for sure, from then, started to be differently attentive to Mary, began to follow her niece.
The author has not revised the transcript and its translation.
Michiel Peeters is a prominent Catholic priest and university chaplain in the Netherlands at Tilburg University.
