Feast of the Visitation: On Spiritual Friendship, Formal and Otherwise (Updated)

Jump for Joy  by Eisbacher

Today's Gospel is wonderfully joyfilled and encouraging: Mary travels in haste to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and both women benefit from the meeting which culminates in John's leaping in his mother's womb and prophetic speech by both women. The first of these is Elizabeth's proclamation that Mary is the Mother of Elizabeth's Lord and the second is Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Ordinarily homilists focus on Mary in this Gospel lection but I think the focus is at least as strongly on Elizabeth and also on the place the meeting of the two women has in allowing them both to negotiate the great mystery which has taken hold of their lives. Both are called on to offer God hospitality in unique ways; both are asked to participate in God's mysterious plan for his creation despite not wholly understanding this call and it is in their coming together that the trusting fiats they each made assume a greater clarity for them both.

Luke's two volumes (Luke-Acts) are actually full of instances where people come together and in their meeting or conversation with one another come to a fuller awareness of what God is doing in their lives. We see this on the road to Emmaus where disciples talk about the Scriptures in an attempt to come to terms with Jesus' scandalous death on a cross and the end of all their hopes. They are joined by another person who questions them about their conversation and grief. When they pause for a meal they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and their entire world is turned on its head. That which was senseless is on its way to making a profound sense which will ground the existence of the church. Peter is struggling with the issue of eating with the uncircumcised; he comes together with Cornelius, a Centurion with real faith in Christ. In this meeting Peter is confirmed in his sense that in light of Christ no foods are unclean and eating with Gentiles is Eucharistic. There are a number of other such meetings where partial perception and clarity are enhanced or expanded. Even the Council of Jerusalem is a more developed instance of the same phenomenon.

On Spiritual Friendship, both formal and informal:

I personally love Eisenbacher's picture above because it reminds me of one privileged expression of such spiritual friendship, namely that of spiritual direction. I can remember many meetings with my own director where there was immense surprise and joy at the sharing involved, but one time in particular stands out --- especially in light of today's Gospel. I had experienced a shift in my experience of celibacy. Where once it mainly spoke to me of dimensions of my life that would never be fulfilled (motherhood, marriage, etc), through a particular prayer experience it had come to be associated instead with espousal to Christ and my own sense of being completed and fulfilled as a woman. 

As I recall, when I met with my director to share about this experience (c. 1983), I spoke softly about it, carefully, a little bashfully --- especially at first; but I also gained strength and greater confidence in the sharing of it. (I was not uncertain as to the nature of what I had experienced, but sharing it allowed it to claim me more completely and let me claim a new sense of myself in light of it.) My director listened carefully, and only then noted that she had always prayed for such a grace for all her novices (she had been novice director for her congregation); she then excused herself and left briefly. When she returned she had a CD and CD player with her. Together we sat quietly, but joyfully and even a bit tearfully celebrating what God had done for us while we listened to John Michael Talbot's Canticle of the Bride.

New This Year:

This year, the Feast is again marked by what I have shared a little about this past week, an experience of travelling distances over the years and finally coming together again, reconnecting, with members of my class in the Franciscans. One celebrated her jubilee in the congregation in 2019, and the other, now a Mom with a grown Son, had left the congregation some years after I did. I have already written a little about what reconnecting has meant to me with regard to Sister Christine, but that, and actually being able to reconnect with Norma as well, has caused new life to "leap within me". We are such different people and our spiritualities and histories are very different as well. But God has been working faithfully in our lives and we too have been faithful to our God. As a result, the ability to come together in our differences after years of journeying and growing in our relationship with Christ, to delight in each other in both similarities and differences, and especially, to find that fundamental commitment to love one another was strongly present, affected me in some indefinable way. I felt that something really essential had been returned to me, a part of myself whose loss I had not even known how deeply I suffered.

Several years ago I shared that my director brought me the following poem. It reminds me of the joy of sharing in spiritual direction (accompaniment), but this year it takes on as well the rich resonances of conversations, emails, MP3 files (songs), and pictures exchanged as three undoubted sisters-in-Christ reconnect, fill one another in on who we are today, and share (or begin to share) to some degree how God has been working in our lives since we last saw or spoke to one another:

As Mary faced

        her unexpected future

And hastened to Elizabeth,

        who was similarly expecting,

and shared with her

        her hopes,

        her dreams,

        her concerns,

        her fears;

spoke frankly as sisters

        about their love of God,

        about their future,

        about  their commitment

        to God's mission,

so we two come together today,

        speaking the truth

        in love and faith,

       and God is with us.

Summary:

 

Elizabeth and Mary come together as women both touched in significant ways by the mystery of God. They have trusted God but are not yet completely clear regarding the greater mystery or how this experience fits into the larger story of Israel's redemption. They are both in need of one another and especially of the perception and wisdom the other can bring to the situation so that they can truly offer God and God's plan all the space and time these require. Hospitality, especially giving God hospitality, takes many forms, but one of the most important involves coming together to share how God is active in our lives in the hope of coming to a greater and more lifegiving perspective, faith, and commitment. It is in coming together in this way that we clarify, encourage, challenge and console one another. It is in coming together in this way that we become the prophetic presence in our world God calls us to be.  The gift of being able to "speak frankly" as sisters (and brothers) is an inestimable gift of God. Let us all be open to serving as friends to one another in this sense. It is an essential dimension of being Church and of the coming of the Kingdom of God.