Today we hear a story of two women (Lk 1:39-45). Two pregnant women supporting each other, as women have done since the beginning of human time, and doubtless will for all time to come.
We hear something of their intimacy. One very young and probably still trying to understand what has just happened to her. One much older, who thought she would never have a child. The closeness of their connection is obvious – but not just the connection between them, also the connection with their unborn children.
Luke puts this account in the center of his Nativity story. On one side is the description of how Mary agrees to what God has planned, even though she has no idea of what that really means. On the other are her extraordinary words of prophesy – a radical manifesto for change even by comparison with the fierce words of other Israelite prophets: “He will cast down the mighty and raise up the lowly” (Lk 1:52).
But that’s for the future. We are not quite there yet. Today we still wait with the two women. Maybe we envy them their closeness, to each other and to the children – both extraordinary (as are all children) but one very especially so – as Elizabeth knew, and her unborn son knew, even as soon as Mary came into the room.
But the point of this story is not an account of some intensely private moment – otherwise why would Luke have it in his gospel? Yes clearly Mary had a unique relationship with God, and only she had the experience of carrying a child who was the presence of that God in this world. But Elizabeth, and John, were also bound up in that relationship. And so are we.
We also have a unique relationship with God. Each one of us is special. And our relationship is as intimate as that of Mary – God is inside us – with just as much reality as He was inside her.
As Saint Augustine noted in his autobiography, he spent so much time and energy rushing around, searching for God, getting caught up in one more new shiny thing, one more experience that might lead him closer. But there was God inside him all the time: “I was looking for you out there… You were always in me, but I was not always in you.”
Many of us will not know the experience of having a child inside us. No-one will have the experience that Mary had. But we all have the experience of God inside us – whether we realize it or not, even whether we want it or not. We can shut out our awareness of that reality – from fear, or foolishness, or ignorance. But He is there. And at Christmas we celebrate that fact.