Mary Set Out In Haste

In my mind, I see Mary standing in a room in her father's house. The angel has just departed. The angel will never return. She is there, alone, but now not alone. She believes, she hopes, but she might also fear. I know it doesn't say that, but the next words say she set out in haste. I've always seen her as somehow fleeing across the hill country alone to her cousin's house.

But how could that be? How could a young Jewish woman head anywhere alone? These questions never struck me until I sat in the monastery chapel in Clyde, Missouri and stared up at the mosaics above the prayer stalls--and then again in the paintings at Conception Abbey down the road. The life of Mary is depicted identically in both settings and there at one end is the Visitation. Elizabeth greeting Mary at her doorstep (I always envisioned Elizabeth holding a broom as she walked into a foyer of some kind and found Mary waiting, but here as in many depictions she has gone down on one knee). Zechariah, old and mute, standing behind Elizabeth.

And behind Mary? Joseph in a floppy hat with a walking stick, leading a donkey. Of course he went with her. Maybe he didn't stay the whole three months. Maybe (probably) he didn't have a donkey. Maybe he wasn't too thrilled about the whole thing or maybe he was worried about many many things coming all too soon into his life. But it comforts me to think that he went with her. It's hard to do things alone. It's especially hard to do impossible things alone. But with friendship, companionship, with someone to guide you through the rocky hills and down into the valleys, it might just get done.