When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting

Mi 5,1-4a; Ps 79,2-3.15-16.18-19; Heb 10,5-10; Lk 1,39-45.
23 DECEMBER

With the Virgin Mary, the Lord God changes the rules for the gift of the Holy Spirit in an essential and substantial way. He will be given no longer in a direct way, God-man, but in an indirect way, man-man and creature-creature. Let’s observe what happened with Moses. God takes part of the Spirit that is in him and places him on the seventy elders.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Assemble for me seventy of the elders of Israel, men you know for true elders and authorities among the people, and bring them to the meeting tent. When they are in place beside you, I will come down and speak with you there. I will also take some of the spirit that is on you and will bestow it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you. You will then not have to bear it by yourself.  So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. Gathering seventy elders of the people, he had them stand around the tent. The Lord then came down in the cloud and spoke to him. Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, he bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied. Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, were not in the gathering but had been left in the camp. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent; yet the spirit came to rest on them also, and they prophesied in the camp. So, when a young man quickly told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp,” Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses’ aide, said, “Moses, my lord, stop them.” But Moses answered him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!” (Num 11, 16-17. 24-30).

Until this moment of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the Holy Spirit was always given to man by the Lord. With Elijah it could seem that there has been the gift of the Spirit from man to man. I say: it seems. The text is not clear in this regard.

“Ask for whatever I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha answered, “May I receive a double portion of your spirit.” “You have asked something that is not easy,” he replied. “Still, if you see me taken up from you, your wish will be granted; otherwise not.” As they walked on conversing, a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. When Elisha saw it happen he cried out, “My father! my father! Israel’s chariots and drivers!” But when he could no longer see him, Elisha gripped his own garment and tore it in two. Then he picked up Elijah’s mantle which had fallen from him, and went back and stood at the bank of the Jordan. Wielding the mantle which had fallen from Elijah, he struck the water in his turn and said, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” When Elisha struck the water it divided and he crossed over. The guild prophets in Jericho, who were on the other side, saw him and said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha”  (2Kings 2,9-15).

This substantial change in the gift of the Holy Spirit makes the Christian laden with infinite responsibility. Because it is the Holy Spirit the one who converts, attracts to Christ, convinces, enlightens, vivifies, sanctifies, elevates, recreates and regenerates, if the Christian does not give him to man, this remains in his flesh and never will be opened to the mystery of God and of Jesus.

During those days Mary set out and travelled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most 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? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

It is a great injustice to accuse man of not accepting God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Church. Before attributing this fault to him, the Christian must present himself to him with all the power of the Holy Spirit and breathe him into his heart, just as Mary did with Elizabeth. If the Christian himself is devoid of the Holy Spirit, because he does not grow in grace and in wisdom, the relationship between him and man is only of flesh before the flesh. Flesh cannot speak except according to the flesh. This is the cause why no conversion takes place and no attraction to Christ Jesus is fulfilled.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints ensure that we always speak to man filled with the Holy Spirit.