Luke’s Gospel tells us Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was barren for many years. I can picture Elizabeth averting her gaze and hastening past the crowd outside the gates as the years got long and the hope faded. I can understand how she might have grown weary of the journey—tired of the eyes that watched her and wondered what she could possibly be hoping for, tired of the whispered questions and growing assumptions. I know that tiredness. But I know too that, in that silence, there is a hope that even if God has not answered us the way we wished, he is still good.

Elizabeth and her babe recognize God present in Mary’s womb and proclaim with wonder and joy

The most important aspects of our faith, the ones that touch the greatest mysteries of how we unite ourselves to God, must be bodily experiences as much as they are spiritual ones.

In being broken open by suffering, we are offered the opportunity to let those open spaces be filled with the mercy and compassion of our God