Pope Francis reflects in general audience about the mystery of visitation

At the General Hearing on Wednesday, January 29, Pope Francis reflected on the Mystery of Visitation, although he could not read the text he had prepared for suffering a strong cold.

Next, the catechesis of Pope Francis:

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today we contemplate the beauty of Jesus Christ our hope in the mystery of visitation. The Virgin Mary visits Santa Isabel; But it is above all Jesus, in the mother’s womb, to visit her people (cfr lc 1,68), as Zacarías says in her hymn of praise.

After his astonishment and admiration before what the Angel announces, Mary gets up and puts herself on the way, as all those called in the Bible, because «the only act with which the human being can correspond to the God who reveals himself is that of unlimited availability »(Hu von Balthasar, Vocazione, Rome 2002, 29).

This young daughter of Israel does not choose to protect from the world, does not fear the dangers and judgments of others, but goes out to meet others.

When a person feels loved, he experiences a force that puts love in motion; As the apostle Paul says, “Christ’s love possesses us” (2Cor 5,14), drives us, moves us. Maria feels the impulse of love and goes to help a woman who is her relative, but also an old woman who, after a long wait, hosts an unexpected pregnancy, difficult to face her age.

But the Virgin also goes to Isabel to share her faith in the God of the impossible and hope in the fulfillment of her promises.

The meeting between the two women produces a surprising impact: the voice of the “full of grace” that greets Isabel cause Women and blessed the fruit of your belly! ” (Lc 1,42).

And also a bliss: “Blessed is the one who has believed, because what the Lord has told him will be fulfilled!” (v. 45).

Faced with the recognition of the messianic identity of his son and his mission as a mother, Mary does not speak of herself but of God and raises praise full of faith, hope and joy, a song that resonates every day in the Church during prayer of the eve: the magnificat (Lk 1,46-55).

This praise to the Savior God, who springs from the heart of his humble servant, is a solemn memorial that synthesizes and fulfills the prayer of Israel. It is interwoven of biblical resonances, a sign that Mary does not want to sing “outside the choir” but tune in with the parents, exalting their compassion for the humble, those little ones that Jesus in his preaching will declare “blessed” (cfr mt 5,1- 12).

The massive presence of the Pascual motive also makes the Magnificat a redemption song, which has as its background the memory of the liberation of Israel of Egypt.

The verbs are all in the past, impregnated with a love of love that lights the present of faith and illuminates the future of hope: Mary sings the grace of the past, but she is the woman of the present who carries the future in her belly.

The first part of this song praises the action of God in Mary, microcosm of the people of God who adheres fully to the alliance (vv. 46-50); The second resorts to the father’s work in the macrocosm of the history of his children (vv. 51-55), through three keywords: Memory-Misericordia-Promise.

The Lord, who bowed to little Mary to do “great things” in her and turn her into the mother of the Lord, began to save his people from the Exodus, remembering the universal blessing promised to Abraham (cf. Gen 12,1 -3).

The Lord, faithful God forever, has shed an uninterrupted torrent of merciful love “from generation to generation” (v. 50) about the people faithful to the alliance, and now manifests the fullness of salvation in your child, sent to save to the people of their sins.

From Abraham to Jesus Christ, and the community of believers, Easter appears thus, as the hermeneutical category to understand all subsequent liberation, until the Messiah in the fullness of the times.

Dear brothers and sisters, let’s ask the Lord today to know how to expect the fulfillment of all his promises; and help us to host in our lives the presence of Mary. Putting ourselves in his school, that we all discover that every soul that believes and expects to “conceive and generates the verb of God.”