God's providence in the mystery of the Visitation
The Visitation is the great example of fraternal charity, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary immediately goes to help her cousin – but this event sheds light on providence in the trials we all face.
From
The Nine Months: The Life of Our Lord in the Womb
Fr Henry James Coleridge
The Visitation – Part I
Part II:
There can be little doubt that the Annunciation and the Incarnation were immediately followed by the Visitation, as we call it, of our Blessed Lady.
The manner in which this mystery is related by St. Luke, who seems to speak of our Lady as if she were altogether alone in her journey, both to the house of her cousin, and when she returned thence to Nazareth, suggests the opportunity of some remarks on the relation of these Gospel narratives to the actual history which it is well to make at the outset of the part of our work on which we are now engaged.
Dealings of God with souls
It is well also to remind ourselves of certain truths concerning the manner of the dealings of God with souls, as well as concerning the formation of the Gospel history as we have to form it, which may help us the better to understand the narrative on which we shall now for some time be occupied. We shall speak first of these ways of God in general.
No thoughtful person can doubt that one of the most beautiful parts of God's dealings with His creatures is the manner of His conduct of single souls, one by one, along the path which His Providence has chosen for them.
His wisdom, His love, His patience, His foresight, His indulgence, and other wonderful attributes, shine out more and more conspicuously, in proportion as we come to be able to understand these methods.
But in our present state of imperfect knowledge and feeble intelligence, the whole of this great range of the works of God can hardly be said to be within our reach. His thoughts are not as our thoughts, and His ways are not as our ways. He reserves to Himself the knowledge of the human heart, and we are consequently without even the preliminary and elementary knowledge of His own action thereon.
All that we can say is that the little which we know shows us how wonderful and beautiful the whole must be.
God’s dealings with each single soul
But it must be remembered that God has not only a special treatment for each one of His children, but that He deals with us all, not singly, as if there were no other soul in the world but our own, but by using us for the instruction, edification, enlightenment or crucifixion one of another, in such a way that the threads of each life which He guides so unerringly are intertwined with the threads of all the lives of all those we come across – those with whom we live, those above us or under us, our friends and our enemies, our family, and strangers with whom we are thrown into contact – and that no eye but His own can trace out the innumerable influences under which our character is formed and our trial carried out, the services we render one another, the mischiefs we do one to another.
A man's character is affected by his home, and by his companions outside his home, and he works in his turn on all around. A family is tinged, or stained, or elevated, by every single member of all of whom it is made up.
An accident, as it seems, takes away the mother, or the father, or chains some one of the children to a sick bed, deprives the brothers of the softening influence of their sisters, or leavens the whole by the introduction of some single stranger, a teacher, or a servant.
Nothing of this kind is without its influence, and, if this be so, how multitudinous are the influences under which we live!
Who can think out all the effects that he has experienced, from what seem chance events, meetings, separations, bereavements, connections? Yet all these things and a thousand others are managed for us by the forethought and decree of God.
We can only repeat that His ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are not as our thoughts. Each soul is the subject of a separate discipline and treatment by Him, and He arranges the thousand lives which are continually interlacing, in such a way as to make the discipline He allots to each one have on all the others, in the degree in which He so wills it, the effect He intends for each.
Application to St Joseph and to Our Lady
Let us apply this to the case of our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph.
It has been said that in the case of the frequent miraculous or marvellous Conceptions, of which mention is to be found in the annals of Sacred Scripture, it had usually been the case for the husband of the mother of the saint or hero who was to be born to be told beforehand of the promised Conception of the child.
Every thought in our Blessed Lady was perfectly well ordered and calm. Her mind was not so overpowered, even by the greatness of the message of the Angel or of the mystery which followed on that message, that she could forget her natural ties and relationships, and especially those which connected her with St. Joseph.
It is true that he could have nothing to do with the mystery which was to be carried out by the operation of the Holy Ghost. But she was still his wife, still bound to him by the closest affection, an affection only deepened and intensified by the union of hearts between them on that very point of the preservation of the most perfect purity.
The great elevation which had come to her, and which had made her the Mother of God, did not destroy the duties, the relations, the dependence on him to which her marriage vow bound her.
But she had received no commission or hint to inform him of what had passed. Nor was she told how or when the communication would be made to him.
No guidance given as to what to say to St Joseph
It is impossible that our Lady could fail to notice this omission, and to understand that it must have a meaning and a purpose.
Here, amid all the joy and the responsibility which had come to her was a question which she might ask herself, and await the solution in the Providence of God. It cannot be doubtful that she must have longed, in the calm and perfectly submissive manner in which she could long for any thing not yet declared as the will of God, for the moment when he whom she loved so tenderly could share her happiness and give her his sympathy and assistance in the great work laid upon her of honouring the Incarnate King of heaven and earth.
But the "times or moments," as our Lord said to His Apostles just before his Ascension, are kept by God in His own power, and it is not for us to know them. One of the delicate methods which He often adopts for the eliciting some very beautiful exercises of virtue, is the delay of something desired, the selection by Himself of the proper moment, sooner or later, when something is to be done or to be made known.
He is as wonderful in His choice of moments as in His choice of instruments and of means. He makes perfect and ripens souls like flowers, one by one, and His beautiful working on each must take its own time. We cannot doubt that this, too, was well understood by our Blessed Lady. It was one of the things she would keep and ponder in her heart, that God must have some beautiful design of His own with regard to her Spouse.
She would not indulge her natural affection so far as to ask, as St. Peter asked about St. John, "Lord, and this man, what?" when our Lord answered him almost severely, "What is it to thee?"1
The designs of God
It appears to have been the plan of God that St. Joseph, whatever he might think or surmise, or even know, in a human and ordinary way, concerning the mystery which had taken place, was to be left without any Divine direction concerning it until the time came when his own action was requisite for the carrying on of the sacred mystery.
In this God only proceeded in the way which He so often follows, of leaving His saints in the dark about His future decrees concerning themselves, until the necessary moment comes. For the delay which is thus secured for the silent working of His graces in the hearts which are so dear to Him, is often the most precious opportunity which is afforded them in a whole life, for the exercise of the most sublime virtues.
It may be a period of exquisite trial, but of trial exquisitely corresponded to, by a patience, a humility, a charity, a prudence, and an exercise of confidence in God under difficulties, which may win for the person who is thus tried the very highest of crowns.
It was characteristic of Eve that she should go at once to Adam with her miserable discovery of the sweetness of the forbidden fruit. Mary kept her secret to herself and to her God, leaving it to Him to reveal it in His own time and way to St. Joseph, confident that the time and the way which He would choose would be the best for her and the best for her Spouse.
We can hardly imagine her speaking before she had the command to speak. She might hope, but she could not know, what was to be the counsel of God as to her husband's future position to her or her Child.
But in so mighty and lofty a mystery every detail was in the hand of God alone. That the Holy Family was to have a divinely appointed head, and that that head was to be St. Joseph, was a decision not yet manifested, and which could not be taken for granted.
Silence as to St Joseph’s favours
Never, in truth, have the servants of God been otherwise than silent and secret as to the favours He has bestowed upon them or the great commissions which He has confided to them. To speak of such things without necessity would be altogether inconsistent with the saintly character.
On the other hand, God was to give to St. Joseph the opportunity of that peculiar and unique trial to which his faithfulness was exposed, and which we shall have presently to endeavour to explain. There would have been no room for this, which was the condition, in a certain sense, of that incomparable eminence which he was to attain in the kingdom of God, if the common ways of human action had been followed, and the husband of Mary immediately informed, on the authority of God, of the mystery which had been carried out in her womb by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and of the position which he was himself to occupy in relation to the mystery.
Thus we see in this, as in all the delays of God, that He holds back from what seems to us so natural and so much an object of desire, for the wisest reasons, in order to make the boon when granted more precious, the grace when won more deep and lasting, the joy more intense, the blessing in itself greater, because conferred on a soul more fitted by expectation, trial, and desire for the reception of the highest graces.
While we are tempted to chafe in impatience, God is ripening the soul in which we are interested for gifts more excellent, and the glory so long delayed is all the more splendid, when it comes as the conquest of prayer and the crown of the patient exercise of virtue.
Narratives of St Matthew and St Luke
It will be well also in the present place, to make a few remarks on the narratives of the two Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. Luke, on whom we are dependent for our information concerning these early mysteries of the Gospel history.
It is necessary to repeat over and over again, that we must always bear in mind the scope and aim of each single Evangelist, in considering the relation of what he has written for us to the statements of any other, and also to the general course of the history independently of its particular annalists.
We have no single continuous narrative of these events. We have two independent statements, not covering the same ground, nor professing, even together, to make up a continuous account of all that happened. Each Evangelist leaves out much. We implied just now that there is an instinct of silence about holy persons, especially about those who are the chief personages in the Gospel history. There is also a rule of silence in the Evangelical historians themselves, as to those circumstances of the story which do not directly refer to the object which each one of the several writers has in view.
That St. Matthew omits much and that St. Luke omits much which might have been said, is obvious at first sight. We have to make up one complete account, not only by joining the two narratives together, but also by reminding ourselves of much which is not directly mentioned by either, but which must have taken place, and which is implied in what they say, or in what we know from other sources.
What St Luke omits
We have an instance of this last class of facts in what has been said of the vow by which Mary, and, as it seems certain, St. Joseph also were bound.
This vow is nowhere mentioned, but we are as certain of it as if it had been mentioned, from the words of our Blessed Lady to the Angel at the Annunciation. If we continue our examination of the narrative of St. Luke, on which we shall now have to comment in reference to the mystery of the Visitation, we shall see at once that it has to do with nothing which did not take place in and with regard to our Blessed Lady herself.
St. Joseph is not mentioned, from the time at which his name occurs as the husband to whom our Lady was espoused when St. Gabriel was sent to her, till the time when he is mentioned as going up to Bethlehem to be enrolled with Mary his wife. Whatever part he may have had in the Visitation is not mentioned, nor is there any mention of his hesitation about taking to him his wife, after she had been found with child by the Holy Ghost, nor does St. Luke tell us how that hesitation was set at rest, by the vision of the Angel enjoining him to take the part of the father of the Child.
As far as St. Luke is concerned, there is no word about any of these things.
What St Matthew omits
On the other hand it is equally true that St. Matthew leaves out altogether the mysteries of the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Nativity itself.
He says nothing at all about the reason which took the Holy Family to Bethlehem before the Nativity. Of course it would be most unreasonable to suppose that the first Evangelist was ignorant of these things.
What is essential for us to imprint on our minds is that it would be equally unreasonable to expect him to mention them, unless they fell in with the direct object which he had before him as he wrote, and which he served by mentioning the hesitation of St. Joseph, which proved the Divine and Virginal Conception of our Lord, and the Epiphany, which proved that He ought to have been born as He was born, at Bethlehem, by the witness of the prophecies, interpreted by the Jewish authorities themselves.
The two narratives must be understood as each perfectly true and authentic. But no argument can be admitted which rests simply on the silence of either, with regard to some point which it would have been inconsistent for either to have mentioned, considering the direct and only object which that particular Evangelist had before him.
Narrative of the Visitation
Let us now apply these truths to the narrative before us of the Visitation. It is, as has been said, entirely confined to the briefest possible account of the doings of our Blessed Lady.
"And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country in haste, into a city of Juda, and she entered into the house of Zachary, and saluted Elisabeth."
Such is this simple statement, and, if we were to suppose that it tells us all that passed, we might imagine that our Lady, a young and most modest bride, left her home without any communication with her husband, and travelled a distance of two or three days' journey at least, alone and unguarded. If this had been the case, it is probable we should have been told how it was that so extraordinary a course was taken by her, without any direct guidance from God.
It is impossible to suppose, in the first place, that she took this journey without the cognizance and permission of St. Joseph. He had over her movements the rights of a husband, and she is not likely to have been guided to disregard them. The truth is that the Evangelist does not mention what is obvious and what ought to be taken for granted.
In the second place, there is no reason at all for supposing that she took this journey unaccompanied by St. Joseph. The Annunciation took place at the time of the year when it was the custom of the Jews to resort to Jerusalem for the great feast of the Pasch. We know from St. Luke that it was, a few years later than this, the custom of St. Joseph and our Blessed Lady to go up from Nazareth at this time. It is most likely that this devotion had been practised by them from the very beginning.
Thus the opportunity for the journey of Mary may well have been furnished by the incidence of the great feast almost immediately after the Annunciation. She might go to Judaea with her husband and on the way to the feast. The town in which St. Zachary and St. Elisabeth lived was some distance beyond Jerusalem, and thus it seems certain that St. Joseph would accompany our Lady, after they had paid their devotions in the Holy City, to the home of her kinswoman.
If this was so, we may pause for a moment to reflect on the presence of the Incarnate God, in the womb of His Mother, at this great feast, the same at which He was afterwards to offer Himself as the true Paschal Lamb, and on the affections and thoughts of that Blessed Mother, who had, so few weeks before, perhaps, left those sacred precincts as the Virgin bride of Joseph, thinking only of the holy resolution she had offered to God of perfect purity in the marriage state, and of her great desire to live to see the Incarnation, and be herself the humblest among the handmaidens of the chosen Mother of God. And now she found herself that chosen Mother, and she had already in her womb the promised Saviour of mankind!
House of St Zachary
The sacred text does not linger on this visit to the Temple which our Blessed Lady may have paid in her passage through Jerusalem, for it dwells on nothing that does not belong strictly to the subject before us.
The haste which our Lady used in her journey is directly mentioned, probably because it was desirable to show the quick obedience of the Blessed Virgin to the suggestion of the Angel, a haste perhaps urged on her also by some special impulse of the Holy Ghost. For this language is usual with Sacred Scripture, when the special impulse of the gifts of the Holy Ghost is signified, as when it is said that the Spirit drove our Lord into the desert to be tempted by the devil, and on other such occasions.
It would be natural for our Lady, if she once left her home, to hasten on her journey, because it was for her an unusual thing to find herself in public, exposed to the gaze and company of men.
"She entered into the house of Zachary."
… and this shows that she knew it, and that she knew she would be welcome, as among old and dear friends, if on no other grounds connected with the mystery which had made her the Mother of God.
Her salutation of St. Elisabeth shows her familiarity with her, and also her humility, for it seems to have been the custom for the lower in rank to salute the higher. She was the Mother of the unborn King, but she would make herself humble in all things, and her motive in this journey, after obedience, may have been principally one of charity, hoping that, as St. Elisabeth was old and infirm, she might be of use in waiting upon her.
Nor could she find any occupation more congenial to her own humility than thus to make herself the handmaid of the mother of the Precursor. She had longed, as has been often said, that she might be the servant of the Mother of God and now that she has received herself that unapproachable dignity, she at once lowers herself where she can, and makes herself the servant of Elisabeth.
Mary’s intention and God’s design
But though this had been the chief motive of Mary in her journey, God had other and higher aims in bringing it about.
For it was His design to use her presence, and that of our Lord in her womb, for the sanctification of St. John in the womb of his mother, and for the filling St. Elisabeth herself with the Holy Ghost and the spirit of prophecy.
These great blessings were to be conferred through the presence of our Lady at once, and as she was to remain for nearly three months in the house of her cousin, it must be supposed that the benefit of her abiding presence and continual conversation was not less great than that of her first salutation.
God may have had other designs also, with regard to the trial of St. Joseph, but the motive which was present to the mind of the Blessed Mother herself was probably that which has been mentioned, of charity and humility.
See the next part to enter more deeply into the mystery of the Vistitation itself:
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From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Nine Months: The Life of Our Lord in the Womb
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