Nowhere in the biblical account is it implied that the baby kicked in the womb, although I know just about all mothers today talk about their babies kicking. In the Spirit and in faith, St Elizabeth knew that her child leapt rather than kicked for joy, and I consider we should give credence to the only possible witness to the event. Then she exclaimed these great words of faith and deference: "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me.... and blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

We might ask ourselves for a minute, what objective difference can there really be between a kicking action and a leaping action when it involves an unborn baby? Granted I am a man and don’t have the experience, but perhaps the difference is in the way the mother interprets it more than anything else. A mother that considers her baby to be fighting her, will more likely imagine the movement to be a kicking. But the mother who thinks of the movements as signs of the baby’s joy or gladness as he experiences his earliest sensations might, it seems to me, think more readily of the baby leaping. Leaping is more appropriate to the language of faith. And experts tell us how much the attitude of the mother and even the father towards the unborn baby can affect the child. The attitude of faith is fundamentally wholesome and life-giving, while an attitude of complaint is fundamentally life-destroying to oneself and to others and especially to one’s dependants.

That contrast of faith and complaint can be seen to characterise the difference between Mary’s response of faith to the divine word conveyed to her, the response in which Elizabeth so exulted, and the response that had been made six months earlier by St. Elizabeth’s own husband Zacharias to the divine word conveyed to him, that in their advanced years they too would have a child that would be great before the Lord. He probably spoke for his wife as well as himself. Zacharias had complained then that his own age and his wife’s seemed to make nonsense of the word of the angelic vision to him. He had not accepted that the Lord who had given the promise could look after such matters very well Himself. As a result of his unbelief he had to endure being speechless until after their son was born and he had obeyed God in signifying his agreement to the name John for him rather than accepting the pressure from his family and friends to name him after himself..

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe", said Jesus Himself to His apostle St. Thomas many years later, when Thomas, like Zacharias, had only believed on the evidence of the event that had been promised. For if the promise is divinely given, we do better to believe it in spite of counter-evidence. Part of the burden of the Old Testament prophets too was how the people might get to believe the word imparted through them, when there was abundant counter-evidence, and when the fulfilment promised was to take place at a later and indeterminate time. "Therefore He shall give them up until the time when she who is in travail has brought forth;" says the prophet Micah in our passage today. "Then the rest of His brethren shall return to the people of Israel. And He shall stand and feed His flock in the strength of the Lord." They were called to believe in the promise before its fulfilment, and so are we as we look forward to the final Coming of the Lord, though for us, the time of fulfilment has already begun to arrive. For as it is said in the letter to the Hebrews, by the will of God we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

It can also be underlined that part of the language of faith on the part of these two women was a willing and truthful deference. For the Blessed Mother the language of faith is: be it unto me according to thy word. For St Elizabeth the language of faith is: Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Faith must willingly and truthfully defer to what directs it or inspires it. For faith is the opposite of self-direction, whether that have the character of self-accusation or self-confidence. In our Old Testament lesson, only by faith could the prophet have expected insignificant Bethlehem to bring forth the sought-for ruler in Israel. In the second lesson from Hebrews Christ Himself is shown to be in a true deference to the Father’s will. The truth is that there is no faith without a truthful and willing consonance with a higher authority, and with the common confusion between faith and self-confidence, that may not be something that we regularly hear about.

It is the task of Christians to place a truthful and willing deference such as Mary’s and Elizabeth’s back on the world’s menu, if the world is to survive its current onslaughts of Islam and secularism. It is the task of Christians once again to teach our contemporaries a true anthropology, a true theory of man, based upon the willingness to defer to his creator and His word of teaching. Deferring to faithful obedience, we must swim upstream on the way of Christ when the downstream current is strong. In truth, this is exciting. Knowing that the seemingly impossible is the will of God makes our time exhilarating. So don’t get carried off downstream, because that is the way of death. Enjoy the upstream struggle, because this is the way directed, the way consonant with, the way of Christ, the way of life.