Why Visiting a Friend is Good for the Heart: An Advent Reflection

When I was having my fourth baby, my sister flew all the way from England – just to snuggle the baby, do the cooking, washing, wrestle the other three children, let me sleep, and play with my hair. When I heard she was coming, I am pretty sure the child in my womb leapt. I felt so loved, so “tended to”.

Who does that? Flies across the world to do someone else’s chores? 

Women do it. 

Mary did it.

Women have a God-given gift for visiting others – just to be of use, just to be present. We also have the gift to receive others. To visit as Mary did, to receive visitations as Elizabeth did.

As soon as Mary receives the news that she is to be the Mother of the Lord, she sets forth to visit her pregnant cousin. This amazes me. I am pretty sure that if I were holding in my womb the Lord of the Universe, I would be tempted to lie very still on a chaise lounge and look about for the servants! But not Mary: in her feminine perfection, she embarked upon an arduous journey to Judea. She visits Elizabeth to be with her, to accompany her in her domestic life.

Mary is always a model for our womanhood. (You can read about my journey to womanhood). Her visitation to Elizabeth was an exceptional moment in which she perfectly lived the tender and tough, heroic and human love for her “sister” in faith. She put her own situation to one side, and elevated Elizabeth’s needs above her own. I believe Mary received equal nurture and nourishment from serving Elizabeth. They lived their history-changing pregnancies in the ordinary moments of the day in, day out rhythm of domestic life.

The story of The Visitation is both amazing and ordinary. It invites us to cultivate and delight in this feminine gift of visiting people and being visited. I remember in the days of lockdowns in Victoria, in a moment of inspiration, I drove from Ballarat to Upper Beaconsfield with a bunch of flowers and a packet of sanitary napkin pads on the front seat to visit a friend in need for her birthday. It was an “illegal” and thrilling journey. The hug that I received was just magical.

The Visitation invites me to ponder and to be docile to the movement of the Holy Spirit. This passage encourages me to think, “maybe I should pop in, sweep her floors, do her dishes, have a cup of tea, and chew the fat.”

These small visitations build the communion of saints here on earth. They entwine faith,  friendship, tenderness, joy, laughter, courage, and love into the fabric of our ordinary life.

NB: Our fourth child was a girl; we named her Elizabeth Mary.