A reading from the Song of Songs (2:8-14)
She
The voice of my love!
See how he comes
leaping on the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My love is like a gazelle,
like a young stag.
See where he stands
behind our wall.
He looks in at the window,
peering through the opening.
My love lifts up his voice,
he says to me:
He
Come then, my love,
my lovely one, come.
For see, winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers are appearing on the earth.
The season of songs has come,
the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree is putting forth its figs
and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance.
Come then, my beloved,
my lovely one, come!
My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock,
in the coverts of the cliff,
show me your face,
let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet
and your face is lovely.
The Song of Songs, a biblical gem, is a celebration of love. First a woman (She), and then her lover (He), speak in this reading. The woman yearns for the ‘beloved’ who is coming, and this has been understood also as the yearning of God’s people for the Messiah. She envisages him as ‘leaping on the mountains’, which evokes the story of the Visitation, in which Mary travels through the ‘hill country’. In travelling with her child to visit the pregnant Elizabeth she brings about the first meeting of the Lord with the people he loves. The words of the ‘beloved’ in turn express his longing to meet the woman again, now that ‘winter is past’, for her ‘voice is sweet’, and her ‘face is lovely’, and also suggest the desire of the Messiah to be united with his people, his ‘love’. This intimate evocation of love invites a deeper appreciation of human love, and acknowledges the profound yearning to meet the Lord which lies in the human heart, as well as the Lord’s longing to meet those he loves.
Alternative first reading
A reading from the prophet Zephaniah (3:14-18)
Shout for joy, daughter Zion,
Israel, shout aloud!
Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem!
The Lord has removed your sentence;
he has turned your enemy away.
The Lord is king among you, Israel:
you have nothing more to fear.
On that Day, it will be said to Jerusalem,
‘Zion, have no fear, do not let your hands fall limp.’
The Lord your God is within you,
the saving warrior.
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love,
he will dance with shouts of joy for you
as on a day of festival.
I have taken away your misfortune,
I no longer need you bear to the disgrace of it.
Delight at meeting the loved one is present in this reading too. These words of Zephaniah finish his short book with psalms of joy. It is twice stated that the Lord is ‘in your midst’. This is the reason for the rejoicing. The pain of exile and of separation is ended. It is time for dancing, and the Lord will lead the dance. The Lord will renew Israel with his ‘love’ (’ahabah).
Psalm 33 (32) Waiting for the Lord, and the joy of meeting are evoked here.
O morning star,
radiance of eternal light and sun of justice,
come and enlighten those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Wisdom is described as ‘a reflection of the eternal light’ (Wisdom 7:26; Hebrews 1:3). Malachi reads: ‘for you who revere my name, the sun of justice will rise with healing in his rays’ (3:20). The messianic poem in Isaiah 9 speaks of those who dwell ‘in shadow dark as death’, which is taken up in the Benedictus (Luke 1).
A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke (1:39-45)
Mary set out at that time and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. Now it happened that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Look, as soon as your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And, blessed is she who believed that what was said to her from the Lord would be fulfilled.’
Straight after the annunciations to Zechariah and to Mary in Luke 1 there follows this delightful tale of Mary travelling to visit Elizabeth. The encounter of the two mothers-to-be is also an encounter of their sons in the womb. Elizabeth is the principal speaker here and she reports that as she received Mary’s greeting the child in her womb ‘leapt for joy’. The child, already ‘filled with the holy Spirit’ (1:15) from his mother’s womb, cannot fail to sense the presence of the Lord. The joy here recalls the rejoicing in the passage from Zephaniah that ‘the Lord is in your midst’. Having expressed her own faith, Elizabeth commends the faith of Mary.
Which is more significant, the meeting of mothers or the meeting of children?
The words of Elizabeth are joined to the words of Gabriel in the ‘Hail, Mary’.