The Church of the Visitation

The wall of Magnificats in every language

Melissa and I mastered the light rail today, which took us from our hotel on Mount Scopus all the way to the other side of Jerusalem and the last stop at the top of Mount Herzl.

The village of Ein Karem was a short, hot walk down the mountain. We found the Spring of Mary, spouting out cold water despite being plugged with two kids who were crawling their way down the kid-sized tunnel that the water came from.

The Church of the Visitation was a peaceful church halfway up the next hill. So what's the Visitation? Luke records that when Mary heard she was pregnant, she went on a trip to visit her sister, Elizabeth, "in the Judean hillside." Someone in Christian tradition said, "Must be Ein Karem!" and so the legend grew. Like most places in the Holy Land, no one can prove this is really where Elizabeth lived (and therefore, where John the Baptist was born), but this doesn't bother me. That'll be a post for another time.

When Mary reaches Elizabeth, JBap leaps in Elizabeth's womb. That's maybe my favorite phrase in the Bible. Elizabeth asks how it is that the mother of her Lord would visit her, and Mary bursts into a song we commonly call the Magnificat:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.


Mary’s song is one depicting great upheaval. This is not a leveling. The poor will not only be lifted up, but the rich will be brought down. The charming and capable and beautiful and prosperous people will be surpassed by the downtrodden and the lowly and the rejected and the oppressed.

This song is about turning over the system.

People sometimes walk around with the idea that Jesus was born perfectly in touch with God. I'm not one of them. How often are parents afraid of the words they say that their children will repeat? Listen to the Sermon on the Mount and see if you don't hear Mary's words in there: blessed are the poor, the meek, the lowly. Listen to him teach others to pray that God's will be done. Who was it that taught him other than his mother -- the first to say to God, "Let it be done unto me." It was her prayer he repeated at the end, at the crossroads between taking the cup or pushing it from him.

We found quiet in Ein Karem, the perfect place to hear this song again that has echoed from its first recitation there out to the whole world.