Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Joseph visits too

After the Annunciation (Lk.1:26-38), Mary goes immediately to visit her cousin Elizabeth (Lk.1:39-56). Here the two women dominate the stained glass window but in the upper panel we can clearly see Zechariah and in a panel off to the right, we see Joseph. What I often said to the Holy Ghost Fathers last week on retreat was that in our prayerful reading of Sacred Scripture we need to use our imagination and our emotions to make the Scripture passages come alive for us.
Of course Joseph would have traveled with Mary! Think of those three months that Mary stayed with Elizabeth and all that would have been happening to her in those first months of her pregnancy. What blessings she must have experienced as she encountered the "Word made flesh" growing within her own body.