During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary\u2019s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, \u201cMost blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There\u2019s a lot of powerful imagery in the Visitation, a lot of ways in which this mystery can illuminate our own experiences and needs. It\u2019s another mystery about the beauty and meaning of unborn children. It\u2019s a mystery which I often pray when I am struggling to see Christ in another person, so that I can greet that person with (some ramshackle semblance of) John\u2019s joy and welcome.<\/p>\n
But most often, this mystery speaks to me as a mystery of friendship. And often when I\u2019m praying it I\u2019m thinking of<\/a> friends I\u2019ve failed, and friends I\u2019ve lost. Those failures on my part happened for a lot of reasons, from selfishness to an inability to manage religious differences, but as with many of the things I\u2019ve done (good and bad) as an adult, alcohol definitely played a role in a lot of these stories. So here, have one of the most beautiful, wrenching songs I know, about a liquor-soaked friendship and its end:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jGWdlaLhjD4<\/a>\n
Whoa there, isn\u2019t this supposed to be a joyful mystery? Okay people. I\u2019ll give you another. This is one of those memories which has become so blurred with overhandling that I can\u2019t entirely trust it, so if you saw a scene like this in like \u201cPunky Brewster\u201d or something, just assume it happened there and not in my real life. But I have this possibly-memory of sitting in my elementary-school cafeteria and all of us, all the kids, joining in singing this:<\/p>\n