Wombs Hidden Away for Safe Keeping: Pentecost and the Feast Day of the Visitation

On May 31, the Church celebrates Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth.  This feast day celebrates the time that Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Both women are pregnant in miraculous ways: Mary hasn't had sex, and Elizabeth is beyond her fertile years. Yet both are pregnant. Elizabeth will give birth to John the Baptist, and Mary will give birth to Jesus.

This year, May 31 is also Pentecost Sunday.  Pentecost celebrates the day that the Holy Spirit comes to the first disciples.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that he must leave so that the Holy Spirit can come.  But in Luke, where we find the story of Mary's visit to Elizabeth, Elizabeth hears Mary's greeting, and she's filled with the Holy Spirit.

In these times of pandemic, I'm struck by other juxtapositions of both of these stories and our own contemporary history.  In the Pentecost story, we see the disciples sheltering in place, locked up in their rooms, unsure of what to do next.  I am familiar with that feeling.

Similarly, Mary and Elizabeth find themselves in strange circumstances, their lives upended by events that they couldn't have anticipated.  They, too, have been isolated.  I have spent the last two months trying to process the bizarre times in which we suddenly find ourselves.  I have felt that events have catapulted us into some new direction that we can't quite fathom yet.

In both stories, the humans involved find protection, solace, and support from their communities.  In our current time, we see that happening too, but in so many ways.  I've seen the Facebook posts from people sewing masks for others who couldn't get masks and couldn't sew.  I've seen people running errands for those who shouldn't.  I know that more of us are checking on each other than ever before, even as we have to be careful in terms of physical proximity.

Even the various protests erupting across the country can be painted as community coming together to care for each other.  Like many/most, I found the video of the police officer's murder of George Floyd horrifying.  I take comfort that we find it horrifying, and I hope that lasting change might come this time.

At the same time, I wonder why we have to do this over and over again, why we can't get to the place of lasting change.  I understand the rage that moves people to the streets.  That rage, too, is a kind of Holy Spirit fire, moving through people.

I also have a sense of the forces of evil in the world, forces that will see an opportunity to destroy community in these protests, marches, and riots.  I think of the Pentecost story, of Peter convincing the crowds that they were witnessing God at work, not drunken idiots.

I long for a Peter for our own time.  In the meantime, like Elizabeth and Mary, I will continue to incubate new possibilities in wombs hidden away for safe keeping, wombs that wait for the right moment to announce the presence of God in our midst.