If there’s one thing that comes across loud and clear in our reading today, it’s that Jesus’ mother is blessed. At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel had already said she was ‘highly favoured’ (Luke 1:28). Today, Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says she is the most blessed woman ever to have lived (1:42). Mary agrees, and praises God because people will call her blessed for the rest of time. (1:48).
But it would be wrong to put Mary on a pedestal, as though she belonged to a completely different class to all of us. The remarkable honour of being chosen to be the mother of Jesus is an expression of God’s favour, not the cause of it. A careful reading of Luke’s Gospel reveals that Mary is blessed because she ‘believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her’ (1:45) and she heard the word of God and obeyed it (11:28). Mary’s secret to blessedness is open to all of us, every day.
Ed