Patrick Comerford
Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we are in Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026), and on Trinity Sunday the liturgical colour returned from the Green of Ordinary Time to the white or gold of a festival.
The liturgical colour remains white or gold today because the Feast of the Visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth has been transferred from 31 May to 1 June this year because yesterday was Trinity Sunday. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 1: 39-49 [50–56] (NRSVA):
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
46 And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
[50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
56 And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.]
Today’s Reflections:
At the Feast of the Visitation, transferred from 31 May this year because yesterday was Trinity Sunday, the Church recalls the visit of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Saint Elizabeth, as Saint Luke’s Gospel records in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1: 39-49 [50–56]).
This feast was first celebrated at a Franciscan Order General Chapter in 1263 and quickly spread throughout Europe. Since it is a celebration clearly described in the Gospel, the churches of the Reformation were less inclined to proscribe it than they were other Marian feasts, particularly as it was the occasion for the Virgin Mary to sing her great hymn of praise in honour of her Lord and God.
The Canticle Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) is familiar to Anglicans at Evening Prayer and Evensong throughout the week. The great German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), in a sermon in London over 90 years ago (17 December 1933), said Magnificat ‘is the oldest Advent hymn,’ and he spoke of how Mary knows better than anyone else what it means to wait for Christ’s coming:
‘In her own body she is experiencing the wonderful ways of God with humankind: that God does not arrange matters to suit our opinions and views, does not follow the path that humans would like to prescribe. God’s path is free and original beyond all our ability to understand or to prove.’
Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1: 39-56) recalls Mary of the Magnificat and tells the story of the Virgin Mary’s visit to her cousin, Saint Elizabeth.
When she visits, they are both pregnant – one with the Christ Child, the other with Saint John the Baptist.
Immediately after the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary leaves Nazareth and travels south to an unnamed ‘Judean town in the hill country,’ perhaps Hebron outside Jerusalem, to visit Elizabeth. When she arrives, although he is still in his mother’s womb, Saint John the Baptist is aware of the presence of Christ, and the unborn child leaps for joy.
Saint Elizabeth too recognises that Christ is present, and declares to Mary with a loud cry: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy’ (Luke 1: 42-44).
The Virgin Mary responds to Saint Elizabeth immediately with the words that we now know as the canticle Magnificat.
So we see, side-by-side, two women, one seemingly too old to have a child, but destined to bear the last prophet of the age that is passing away; and the other woman, seemingly too young to have a child, but about to give birth to he who is the beginning of the age that is not going to pass away.
The Virgin Mary of the canticle Magnificat and of the Visitation is a strong and revolutionary woman, unlike the Virgin Mary of the plaster-cast statues and the Rosary.
The Mary I see as a role model for belief and discipleship is the Mary who sets off in a hurry and a flurry to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the Mary with a gob on her who speaks out of turn when she comes out with those wonderful words we hear in this Gospel reading, the Mary who sings the Canticle Magnificat.
What a contrasting pair these two cousins, Mary and Elizabeth, are.
How much they speak to so many of the dilemmas we have in our lives today.
Elizabeth is the older woman. She has been married for years. Because of social and family pressures, she had started to become embarrassed that after all those years of marriage she has not become pregnant.
In those days, even in many places to this day, this was an embarrassing social stigma. She had no son to inherit her husband’s lands, his family position, the place of Zechariah as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem.
She reminds us too of Sarah, who is so embarrassed at the thought of becoming pregnant in her old age that she laughs in the face of the three visitors, she laughs in the face of the living Triune God.
Today, a woman who became pregnant at her stage in life might not laugh. She might quake with fear. She might ask for amniocentesis or an amniotic fluid test.
And yet Elizabeth takes control of her situation. She turns a predicament into an opportunity, a crisis of a pregnancy so late in life into a blessing for us all.
She is so filled with joy when Mary arrives that as soon as she hears the knock on the door, as soon as she hears the sound of Mary on her doorstep, her joy is infectious, so infectious that even the child in her womb – the child who would grow up to be Saint John the Baptist – leaps with joy in her womb.
Elizabeth’s action is radical. Life is tough enough for her. Her husband has been struck dumb. A dumb priest was unlikely to be able to continue to earn a liturgical living in the Temple in Jerusalem. How was she now going to provide for her child when he was born?
But Elizabeth’s actions are more radical than that.
How many women of her age, and her respectable background, would have been so quick to rush out and welcome her much younger, single and pregnant cousin?
How many women would have been worried: ‘What if she stays here and has the child here? Would we ever live with the shame?’
How many women might have suggested instead that Mary goes off and finds a home where they can find someone else to take care of her child when he is born?
Instead, Elizabeth welcomes Mary with open arms. Elizabeth’s joyful greeting, ‘Blessed are you among women …,’ echoes the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel (see Luke 1: 28), ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’
It is almost as if Elizabeth is saying: ‘It doesn’t matter what others think of you. It doesn’t matter how other people are going to judge you. I love you.’
Which is precisely what God says in the Incarnation, in the precious gift of the Christ come among us: ‘It doesn’t matter what others think of you. It doesn’t matter how other people are going to judge you. I love you.’
Mary for her part is such a wonderful, feisty person. She is, what might be described in the red-top tabloid newspapers today as ‘a gymslip Mum.’ But, instead of hiding herself away from her family, from her cousins, from the woman in her family who is married to a priest, she rushes off to her immediately, to share her good news with her.
And she challenges so many of our prejudices and our values and our presumptions today. Not just about gymslip mums and unexpected or unplanned pregnancies, but about what the silent and the marginalised have to say about our values in society today.
And Mary declares:
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
She sings a song of hope in a world where those who are proud in their hearts need to be scattered, where the powerful need to be brought down from their thrones, where the lowly wait to be lifted up.
She sings a song of hope for the hungry who long to be filled with good things, where the rich are about to be sent away empty, where those who have been at the bottom of pile too long need help and mercy.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 1 June 2026, the Visitation, transferred):
A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, from tomorrow (2 June) until Thursday (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7) is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 1 June 2026, the Visitation, transferred) invites us to pray:
Lord, uphold the people of Saint George’s and all who gather in Baghdad, giving them courage to walk streets shadowed by conflict. Thank you that there is peace in your presence. We pray with them for peace across the country too.
The Collect:
Mighty God,
by whose grace Elizabeth rejoiced with Mary
and greeted her as the mother of the Lord:
look with favour on your lowly servants
that, with Mary, we may magnify your holy name
and rejoice to acclaim her Son our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Gracious God,
who gave joy to Elizabeth and Mary
as they recognized the signs of redemption
at work within them:
help us, who have shared in the joy of this eucharist,
to know the Lord deep within us
and his love shining out in our lives, that the world may rejoice in your salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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