This year we will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost on May 28. A few days later, on May 31, we will celebrate the Feast of the Visitation.
In one way these two great feasts in the Church’s year are deeply connected. They both celebrate the working of the Holy Spirit within humanity. At Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the infant Church community and on May 31st we celebrate the Holy Spirit working deeply within the wombs of Mary and of her relative Elizabeth.
In the Visitation narrative, Mary, while bearing Jesus in her womb, travels a long way to her relative Elizabeth, who in her old age, is also bearing a child, the future John the Baptist. Mary’s journey would appear to be quite arduous as she has to travel through ‘the hill country to a town in Judea’ (Luke 1:39). Later she stays with her relative for several months. Difficult though the journey is, it is an act of love, to support and help Elizabeth in her pregnancy, which because of her old age, could be a difficult one.
When they greet each other, we are told in Luke’s gospel that the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. Therefore, even in the womb, John is engaging in his sacred mission, his role in the economy of salvation: to point out the Messiah, the Lamb of God.
The child leaps in the womb under the influence of the Spirit, as Luke (1:15) tells us that ‘even in his mother’s womb’ John was filled with the Spirit. Thus, he recognises the deepest work of the Holy Spirit, the Christ, in Mary’s womb, as does his mother Elizabeth when she says to Mary, ‘Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?’
We too are called to discern, recognise and rejoice in the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others. Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of ecumenism. We must also try to discern the work of the Spirit within our own lives and, like John the Baptist, to discern, acknowledge and accept our own role in the economy of salvation. By becoming oblates, we have already done this.
Our Oblation is a work of the Holy Spirit. We are following the Rule of St Benedict, which is also a work of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Holy Spirit sustains us on our Oblate path. As St Benedict teaches us at the end of the Rule’s Prologue, by following his Rule, ‘our hearts are opened wide’ to the working of the Spirit within us so that ‘the way of God’s commandments is run in a sweetness of love that is beyond words’. Therefore, being opened to the Holy Spirit by trying to live out the Rule, our love for Christ deepens into joy.
As St John Henry Newman might describe it, we are called to discern ‘the quiet work of God’. To do so, we must follow St Benedict’s exhortation to ‘listen with the ear of the heart.
Neil Zoladkiewicz
Oblate of Ealing Abbey
