Thứ Hai 21-12

Bài đọc
Dc 2, 8-14
Tv 32, 2-3. 11-12. 20-21
Lc 1, 39-45

"How does this happen to me? Lord, I am not worthy..."

▪ ▪ ▪

Pope Benedict has written that the Visitation is more than just a trip into the country for a young girl from Nazareth.

As he explains, when Mary "set out in haste" to visit her cousin Elizabeth, she embarked on the world's first Eucharistic procession. She carried Christ into the world. She was a living tabernacle. And so it is that her cousin became the first to experience Eucharistic adoration, and to share in the first Benediction. "Blessed are you," she says to Mary. "Blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed are you who believed." Three times, she speaks the word "Blessed." I can't help but be reminded of our own Benediction, when the bells ring three times, and then we chant the divine praises: "Blessed be God..."

Just as Elizabeth would be the mother of the voice crying in the wilderness - the voice preparing us for the Word - so here, she also gives voice to our own feelings of anticipation, and wonder, and hope.

"How does this happen to me?," she asks. Any of us could ask the same question, as we kneel before the Eucharist -- as we will in just a few moments -- and behold, as Elizabeth did, our savior in our midst.

Deacon Greg Kandra ...