The "Visitation" and the dignity of human life

Meditation of the second decade of the Joyful Mystery brought many reflections to me. Thanks be to God! I am so moved by Luke's Gospel, especially the chapters 1 and 2. I would like to narrate some of the insights. Please read Luke 1:39-45.

Our Blessed Lady, who is with baby Jesus, is going on a very difficult journey some eighty or so miles down from Galilee through the deepest valley up into the mountain region of Jerusalem. That was about 7,000-foot climb to reach the residence of Zechariah and Elizabeth. She finds Elizabeth also with child. As the two women converse, the two babies within them are also conversing. St John the Baptist, when he hears our Lady's voice, leaps with joy in his mother's womb. At that very moment, original sin was removed from the soul of St John and he was filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. At that blessed moment, we hear that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and inspired by the Holy Spirit, she cries out, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42). Here we have a double inspiration by the Holy Spirit with both Elizabeth and St Luke telling us the exact same thing: that Our Blessed Mother is the most blessed among women, and also blessed is the fruit of Her womb.

Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaims the truth that people had difficulty with for the first several hundred years of Christianity when she says, "How is that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?" We have here the first public proclamation from a human person that Mary is indeed the Mother of God. This is very hard for some people to understand. How can God have a mother? Jesus, who is God, has no beginning – He is an eternal person – so how is it possible that He can have a new beginning in the womb of this most extra ordinary of all women? It is not that He has a beginning as a person in the womb of His mother, but He has a beginning as a human being in His mother's womb.

For those who are in favor of abortion, and define the age of the unborn to be aborted, this passage is very important. Here we have a baby who is at six month's gestation leaping in His mother's womb when he hears our Lady's voice. Our Lady, at this time, is probably three or four days pregnant. She heard from the Angel Gabriel that the Holy Spirit was going to descend upon Her and that She was going to receive the Son of God, and She set out immediately. She is already proclaimed to be the Mother of God and Jesus, at this time in our Lady's womb, we know that Jesus would still be microscopic. My scientific knowledge tells me that the embryo has not even implanted in the uterus. That means the embryo is making its way to the uterus. Yet today we have people who want to claim that a baby is not a baby that the humanness of a child is not there. And we have Christian people who want to make the same claim! We need to show them this passage.

Our Lady went in haste when She heard that there was another woman who was in need because she was with child. Our world needs to recognize the same thing. The greatest need of our world today is to recognize the dignity, not only of the woman with child, but of the child within the woman. If we truly want to be of service to the world, we should uphold the rights and the dignity of the human person from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Since we are all equal, if the unborn are not human, then neither are we. If it is okay to destroy them, it is okay to destroy us. It is interesting how even the pro-abortionists would argue against that position. They think that their life is somehow important, but the lives of other people are not.

We need to pray in a very profound way that as Our lady in Her great charity went in haste to visit Her relative who was in need, that now She will come in haste once again because Her children are in need – great need. We must recognize our own dignity and the dignity of every person – especially of those in the womb, those who are handicapped, those who are sick, and those who are elderly.

As Jesus and Mary went up to the outskirts of Jerusalem to visit St Elizabeth and St John and the truth was thus proclaimed, pray and beg our Lord for the grace to send His Mother so that these same truths can be upheld and proclaimed in our Nation in our day.

Again, I beg you to pray the Rosary everyday and offer the decade on "Visitation" for the safety of all the unborn. At the end of each decade, pray this ejaculatiory prayer, "Jesus, protect and save the unborn".