Ain Karem, just a few kilometres west of Jerusalem is the village where there was, according to tradition, the house of Zacharia and his wife Elizabeth. This was where John the Baptist was born and where Mary – after the Announcement made by the Angel – went to visit her pregnant cousin and magnified the Lord, “The Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.”
The words of the “Magnificat” – translated into a multitude of languages – cover the wall that surrounds the courtyard of the Sanctuary of the Visitation, dating back to 1939, and designed by the architect Antonio Barluzzi. In Byzantine times a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist, who had escaped the Massacre of the Innocents, stood on this spot. The stone where – according to an account in the apocryphal Gospel of St. James – the small John the Baptist was hidden and saved by an angel is still kept in the present-day crypt which forms the lower level of the Sanctuary. After the devastation following the Arab conquest, in the times of the Crusaders, the chapel was rebuilt, transforming it into a crypt and building a large basilica on top of it. The area, once again devastated and abandoned, was redeemed by the Franciscans in 1679. Here, on the morning of Tuesday May 31, the Father Custos, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presided the Solemn Mass, which celebrates the meeting between the Madonna and Elizabeth.
“Our lives are inhabited by salvation,” the Custos recalled in his homily, “because God has simply chosen to come to us, in us. Elizabeth and Mary are two women who realize this and recognize it in each other. They recognize that their story has been the object of attention from God and that God has looked and given life where it was possible for life to be born. The Gospel is also this realizing that the presence of God in the life of man cannot happen outside a human relationship because we need the other to recognize the passage if God.”
During the celebration, the friars candidates for the ministries of Lectors and Acolytes were installed. Lectors received the book of Holy Scriptures and the Acolytes – who will have the task of looking after the service of the altar - a chalice.
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso
Read the homily of the Father Custosfor the solemn feast of the Visitation
The words of the “Magnificat” – translated into a multitude of languages – cover the wall that surrounds the courtyard of the Sanctuary of the Visitation, dating back to 1939, and designed by the architect Antonio Barluzzi. In Byzantine times a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist, who had escaped the Massacre of the Innocents, stood on this spot. The stone where – according to an account in the apocryphal Gospel of St. James – the small John the Baptist was hidden and saved by an angel is still kept in the present-day crypt which forms the lower level of the Sanctuary. After the devastation following the Arab conquest, in the times of the Crusaders, the chapel was rebuilt, transforming it into a crypt and building a large basilica on top of it. The area, once again devastated and abandoned, was redeemed by the Franciscans in 1679. Here, on the morning of Tuesday May 31, the Father Custos, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presided the Solemn Mass, which celebrates the meeting between the Madonna and Elizabeth.
“Our lives are inhabited by salvation,” the Custos recalled in his homily, “because God has simply chosen to come to us, in us. Elizabeth and Mary are two women who realize this and recognize it in each other. They recognize that their story has been the object of attention from God and that God has looked and given life where it was possible for life to be born. The Gospel is also this realizing that the presence of God in the life of man cannot happen outside a human relationship because we need the other to recognize the passage if God.”
During the celebration, the friars candidates for the ministries of Lectors and Acolytes were installed. Lectors received the book of Holy Scriptures and the Acolytes – who will have the task of looking after the service of the altar - a chalice.
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso
Read the homily of the Father Custosfor the solemn feast of the Visitation