St. Anne's Church
nor anything
secret that shall not be known…” (Lk. 8:17). Sounds good, doesn’t it? Instinctively, we desire to know
what is hidden, especially if it’s a secret. Daytime television and numerous
other media outlets churn out story after story exposing one thing after
another. We want to be let in on the mysterious, and what could be more
mysterious than God? What’s He hiding, anyway?
You’ll never
have to worry about being kept in the dark. He’s more than willing to reveal
Himself to us. In fact, it seems impossible to try and stop Him. Yet as
witnessed in Scripture and in today’s pilgrimage sites, He seems to do so
counterintuitvely—through the most unexpected people in the most hidden places.
Consider St.
Anne, the mother of Mary, as case in point. St. Anne’s Church, our first
pilgrimage visit of the day, was built by the Crusaders in the twelfth century.
Believed to be the birthplace of Mary, it holds a special place in the hearts
of believers. Yet in our love for Mary, we can often overlook Mary’s own
mother, Anne. In her, we see that a mother’s love and care for her child can
often go unnoticed. We know nothing about Anne personally, and she isn’t
mentioned in the Scriptures. Yet Anne’s hidden openness to God’s promptings
become manifest in her daughter Mary, whose own profound receptivity to God’s
Word would produce the Incarnation. The faith once hidden in Anne and then in
Mary is now made known in Christ.
Fittingly,
the church’s acoustics are excellent and soloists often seek to perform in its
ideal environment. I say fittingly because in the church, as in Anne and Mary,
the spoken word is amplified, crescendoing to fill the space with beauty and
emotion in praise of God. Mary would give voice to this profound reality as it
happened in her own heart, saying: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior…” (Lk. 1:46-47).
The location
where Mary spoke these words to Elizabeth, Ein Karem, was our next destination.
This, the hometown of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist, is located in
the Judean hills only three to four miles outside of Jerusalem.
Mary and Elizabeth
Ein Karem
Here, the
Church of John the Baptist commemorates the birthplace of John, while the
monastery of St. John of the Desert marks the hiding place of Elizabeth and the
child John during Herod’s slaughter of the male children of Bethlehem and the
surrounding region (Mt. 2:16). And though Elizabeth and John were secreted away
to the safety of these isolated caves, and John would later live in the
wilderness, it was only a matter of time before the Word would be made known by
his preaching: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”
(Jn. 1:36).
He, Christ,
is the ultimate mystery we desire to know and God desires to show us. Yet he
does so curiously, in the most unlikely people and places: Anne, Mary,
Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Ein Karem, you, me. But once we gaze into the
mystery, once it hides itself in our hearts, it will eventually become known.
It’s like the unnoticed love of a mother, the filling of a church with praise,
the word of truth identifying the Word made flesh. It must be manifested;
there’s simply no stopping it.
Monastery of St. John of the Desert