MARYS for May #5

The Visitation of Elizabeth by Mary,

Brigid Marlin, 2005, private collection

If we place the Annunciation on March 25th, then the Visitation becomes a springtime event. Brigid Marlin, a contemporary artist who works in the oil and egg tempera technique used by the Flemish Renaissance masters, places the encounter in a sunlit, agricultural landscape of terraced hills and fruit trees. Mary, the light-bearer, reaches out to her cousin. Elizabeth’s unborn child reaches towards the light. In the painting, Elizabeth’s mature age is represented by the tree with fruit behind her, while behind Mary is a young tree in flower. The mysterious knowledge of the coming of Christ is first known by the unborn babe and then by his mother Elizabeth. Thus the sacred things are revealed first to the innocent one who represents the mysterious inner life within us all:

    "If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however insignificant our life seems to be, from it he is forming himself; if we go with eager will, in haste, to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that he desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of his love. And the answer we shall get from others to those impulses will be an awakening into life, or the leap into joy of the already wakened life within them."

                                                                       -- Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God