Saint Elizabeth

Her greeting traveled far beyond that small house in the hill country of Judea. Down the centuries, countless believers have repeated her blessing every day in the Hail Mary:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Yet before that joyful moment, Elizabeth had lived through long years of silent waiting, waiting for something no human strength could bring about.

Scripture describes the couple as righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all His commandments and ordinances. Yet the great sorrow of that home was that they had no children. By the time the story is told, both were advanced in years. The text does not say exactly how many years they had been married, or how old each of them was.

Yet from the very first lines, Saint Luke makes it plain that the couple were righteous. The absence of a child was never proof that God had turned His face away from them, even if people of that time often thought so.

Scripture sums up those long, bitter years in a few short lines. We do not know how the couple shared their tears and hidden sorrow through so many nights. We only know that they persevered together, faithful to the Lord. Their faithfulness stood firm long before their prayer received an answer anyone could see.

Because he and his wife were both old, Zechariah doubted and asked how he could know this was true. Because he did not believe, he was struck mute, unable to speak until the day the promise was fulfilled. When his service ended, he went home in silence, unable to tell anyone a word of what had happened.

The Gospel tells of the announcement to the husband; Scripture does not place Elizabeth at the Temple that day, nor record any conversation between her and the angel. We meet her again only once she has conceived and has quietly kept herself hidden for five months.

Elizabeth received the life growing in her womb as a gift of boundless mercy: the Lord had looked on her with favor. That joy did not need to be announced to the world. It grew day by day, hidden in the mother’s body and the warmth of the home, while the husband beside her could not say a single word to share it with her.

There are homes where the deepest things are shared without any words at all. Here Scripture lets us stand before the mystery of waiting, and adds nothing more.

The two women were kin. An older woman who had been childless and a young virgin met, each with a very different calling, yet both callings went far beyond any human plan.

She also praised Mary as blessed for having believed that what the Lord had spoken would be fulfilled. Overflowing with joy as she was, Elizabeth did not make herself the center of the meeting. She recognized her young relative’s great faith, spoke words that encouraged her, and honored what God was doing in someone else.

Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned to Nazareth. The text does not say whether she stayed until John was born. But those three months were real companionship, not a hurried visit on the way somewhere else.

In Vietnamese families, many people know this kind of love well, the love of patiently staying: coming to help a relative about to give birth, sitting beside an elderly person who is ill, sharing the unnoticed chores in the kitchen. True charity often comes into a house as a visit and then stays on in everyday tasks, rather than stopping at a passing word of concern.

On the eighth day, at the circumcision, everyone meant to name the child after his father, Zechariah, as custom required. But Elizabeth spoke up firmly, without hesitating:

“No, he is to be called John!”

Everyone was surprised, since no one in the family had that name, and they made signs to the father to ask him. Zechariah asked for a tablet and wrote, with a trembling hand:

“His name is John.”

At once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and after so many months of silence he began to bless God.

Elizabeth spoke decisively and bravely. She did not wait for her husband to speak first, though naming a child was normally the father’s right. Together with him she accepted a name given by the Lord, and with it a future that was not just a continuation of the family’s own plans. Zechariah sang a hymn of praise to the Lord who had visited and redeemed His people. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and lived in the wilderness until the day he appeared before Israel.

In the Church’s liturgical year, the feast of the Visitation on May 31 brings that meeting in a house among the hills of Judea back to the hearts of believers every year.

Saint Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, is not the same person as Saint Elizabeth of Hungary or other saints of that name in later centuries. What makes her beautiful is a righteous life of quiet waiting, a joy that knows how to bless others, and the steadiness with which she accepted her son’s calling, without hesitation or calculation.

She left behind no books and no fortune. What she left has melted into the Church’s daily prayer. Each time Vietnamese Catholics pray the Hail Mary, the voice of that elderly mother sounds again in countless homes, though few think of her name as they pray.