ACTS OF THE 7th EUROPEAN ASSEMBLY OF LAY DOMINICAN FRATERNITIES

ANNEX Vb

HOMILY BY FR. EUGENIO BOLEO

FEAST OF THE VISITATION

We have just heard the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth. In order to fully understand
the value of this visit for our faith, we have to remember another visit which Mary
received some time before: the visit of the Spirit of God.

In the biblical tradition, we hear of God’s visits as privileged moments of the

revelation of God and of his concrete love for his people, and also for those to whom
he wants to entrust his mission. In these visits, God gives himself to be known, and
he also allows us to know his plans and his will. In addition, God’s visits are true
personalised encounters. God wants to meet people, and he asks them to welcome
his visits so that these may become true encounters.

In the visit of the Annunciation, the Spirit is not just a communicator and a force for
engendering, but also an awakener. Mary is awakened in all her human capabilities
in order to be able to respond with all her personal freedom and love to what is
proposed to her. In turn, Elizabeth, in the visit Mary makes to her, is awakened too by
the Spirit (and so is the child within her).

When someone receives visits like these, they are awakened and full of joy, although
that joy is mingled with surprise and a certain fear. It is the joy of believing. It is the
joy of finding that we are personally loved by God who visits us and that he wants to
count on us for a mission. The joy of believing that the promises of God will be
fulfilled or that they are in the process of being fulfilled.

Now in the mystery of preaching – and I really do mean that it is a mystery –

something similar happens. Those who preach on the most varied occasions,
formally in liturgy or informally, who want to share their faith, do it first of all because
they have received a visit or several visits from God or from his Son which have filled
them with joy. Joy is the fruit of the love that has been received and also of the hope
that has been awakened.

They also want to share this with others, convey it to them. But in order for their
listeners to be full of joy, too, they need to be awakened by the Holy Spirit. The
preacher becomes an intermediary, a helper of the Spirit. It is a modest task, though
it has become absolutely essential since Jesus has chosen this method by sending
out his apostles. It is the mystery of preaching.

Somebody said to me one day: “I always pray for the priest who is preaching at
Mass, that he may communicate something important to us. And I pray for myself too
– he added – and for the people in the congregation that they may receive something
of value for their lives”. Since then, I have always tried to do the same.

The preacher must always be aware of this mystery: by the gift of the Spirit we have
the joy of believing and it is the Spirit that will awaken others through my mediation.
Elizabeth’s faith grasped what was essential about Mary’s visit: the fulfilment of the
promises of God. What joy that was!
When we preach, no matter in what circumstances, we do it because we are aware
that we have received a great wealth: the gift of believing in the fulfilment of God’s
promises.

It was Mary’s love for her cousin that drove her to go to help her in her advanced
pregnancy. And we set out to share with others whom we love what we have had the
joy of receiving. Elizabeth, awakened by the Spirit, says: “How can it be that the
mother of my Lord comes to me?” and “Blessed are you among women and blessed
is the fruit of your womb”. She has just discovered something essential for our faith:
Mary and Jesus are an inseparable unit.

In an Apostolic Exhortation in 1974, Paul VI pointed out that in the nuptial liturgy we
remember the plan God has for the human couple: Man must not separate what God
has united.

Let’s not separate Mary and Jesus, for theirs is the intimate union of the human and
the divine. Mary without Jesus loses her humility and Jesus without Mary loses his
humanity. Jesus gets his human identity card from Mary. Mary for her part belongs
entirely to her son. This unity has a central role in preaching.

When I first travelled around Portugal with some of then great itinerant preachers, I
was struck by the care they took to get to know the people to whom they were going
to preach: their customs, the pattern of their lives, their traditions, their cultural and
social environment, their family life, even the popular sayings that expressed folk
wisdom. Why was this? To love people you have to know them in their concrete
circumstances. The divine Word wants to become incarnate in the human condition.

If, for instance, we want to talk to people who are much secularised and not very
sensitive to religious questions, we have to meet them in their environment, at work,
in the family, really get to know them in order to love them in their distance from faith.
But we must at the same time be aware that we have a great wealth and fount of
hope for the world, which they lack.

This is the mystery of preaching in our secularised times.

The Spirit is at work, and certainly we want to be at work too.

Amen