2-4 July 2026
Our triduum commences with the traditional feast of the Visitation. Let us ask for the grace to be visited by God’s grace in a special way this month. Mary’s visit to Elizabeth was preceded by two other visits, those of the Archangel Gabriel, to each woman. Gabriel brings them messages from the Lord, and the message is essentially the same: he announces the birth of a child. To Zachariah he announces that his wife Elizabeth, in spite of her barrenness and old age, is going to conceive John the Baptist. To Mary, he announces the birth of our Blessed Lord.
Both women are therefore the recipients of tremendous graces. God is at work. The redemption is about to be accomplished. The mothers are the instruments through which God’s grace reaches the world. One point that can nourish our meditation during these days is that, while God could intervene directly, He chooses to act through human instruments. He gives Zachariah and Elizabeth a baby in their old age, to crown their lifelong fidelity, but the boy to be born will be the greatest of the sons of men. To Mary, in exchange for her consent, He gives to be the Mother of the Eternal Son, who will have no earthly father. She becomes Mother of God, the greatest honour ever given to a creature. God’s grace relies on human consent, and so it enters with world.
Both women are therefore moved by grace, and when they meet, this grace, as it were, erupts, and they are both filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth sings the praises of Mary, whom she acknowledges as the Mother of the Lord, and Mary glorifies the Lord, composing the most beautiful hymn of praise that human tongue has ever pronounced.
While the roles of Mary and Elizabeth are in the service of their respective sons, and are unique, we can nevertheless learn from this profoundly touching episode that God’s grace is always waiting for us ‘around the corner’. Neither of them was expecting a child. Neither of them was expecting their visit together to become one of the mysteries that every generation would contemplate lovingly till the end of time. That’s the way God is. His interventions are unexpected, they come when they are needed, often when we are far from counting on them, but always in God’s time, that is to say, the best time.
During this triduum, let us ask Mother Mary and St Elizabeth to intercede for us and obtain for us the grace to always be receptive to the visits of Divine Providence in our lives, to know how to recognise God in the unexpected, in the gift of a frail infant, of the opening of a new path that will have its joys and its sorrows. Both Jesus and John the Baptist will shed their blood for the truth. They both are par excellence the first martyrs of the New Covenant, bearing witness to the truth in love. May we receive the grace to bear witness to that same truth, animated by the same love for God and for souls.