Before we knew it as a last-ditch effort to throw a football sixty yards with no time left on the clock into a mosh pit in the end zone, those of us who grew up Catholic knew the Hail Mary as a prayer, the words of which slid off the tongue as spontaneously as the words to Happy Birthday. And yet, something tells me that many for whom the prayer is as familiar as their face in the mirror, and who learned this prayer before ever reading the bible, might forget that these words are taken from one of the most beautiful, evocative encounters in all of scripture.

Simply called “The Visitation,” it is a scene as rare as it is beautiful since it is uncommon in any of the four gospels to have an action, event, or interaction among or between people where not only are men absent but where the main characters are two women.

What better depiction in all of scripture is there for portraying or emphasizing the uniqueness of Mary who not only bears the Christ child (theotokos, “God-bearer”) but also reveals the meaning of grace—another one of those religious words that is familiar to our tongue. Grace is not something given solely to Mary. It is not a thing at all. Not a thing one can get at your local drug store or in aisle 4 of your local Catholic gift shop. It is rather a vivifying truth, an awe-filled mystery, a God-given reality made available to each and all of us, namely, the Divinely bestowed capacity, honor, and responsibility to carry the Christ within us.

What does grace mean? It means “the Lord is with thee.” It means that each and every person is a dwelling place, a holy sanctuary where the Holy One is present, where the Spirit is happening. The secular use of the word grace or graceful meaning to move fluidly and beautifully helps us to think not only of Christ as this embodiment of the Spirit’s movement but of ourselves as grateful and cooperative participants in the movement who are going with the flow.

Sometimes we get so focused on the uniqueness and specialness of religious figures that we lock onto how different we are from them rather than how similar we are to them. Like us, Mary did absolutely NOTHING—NIHIL, NADA, NIC, WALA, NISTA, RIEN, NICHTS—to be chosen to bring the Christ into the world. But grace is a holy happening, an enlivening, comforting, healing, liberating movement within us and the world that we are called to respond to and participate in as we see in Mary’s “Yes,” Mary’s FIAT, Mary’s “Let it be.” By her simple but sacred agreement, Mary not only awakens us but charges us to do the same in our place and in our time: birth Christ into the world. This is our one vocation: to incarnate love. John the Evangelist writes

anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never know God because God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)

This is our embodied acknowledgement that we know what it is to be a Christian. This birthing forth is enacted more than spoken. St. John of the Cross famously said, “Where there is no love, bring love, and there love will be found.”

And let us not forget the other important player in this encounter—Elizabeth of Ein Kenem in the hill country of Judah—the first-ever winner of the Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Award who not only houses the child who would become a major actor in the Christian narrative, but also—together with her son—represents a second vocation that is not so unlike our first, namely, to recognize the Christ in the other, the Christ-presence in the neighbor and stranger, the Christic nature of all reality.

But it is difficult to see it in another if we have not first recognized it in ourselves.

For Advent Prayers click here.

Check out essays and reflections on Advent by going to the right hand column where it says TOPIC CATEGORIES. I have written much on Advent/Christmas. –>

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