Flip through the news, scroll social media, or listen to conversations among friends, and you’ll often find them dominated by the political and socio-economic problems of the moment. The constant race to follow the latest story can leave us engrossed in the tangible world around us. While staying informed is important, there is a real temptation to get lost in the worries, arguments, and drama.
In his new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV shows how the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary — which we celebrate on May 31 — helps us put everything in its proper place within God’s plan of salvation. The event of the visitation, when Mary visited Elizabeth, took place amid great turmoil and suffering for the Jewish people, who were living under Roman rule. Their whole history was in fact marked by repeated captivity under powerful empires.
The people of that time were not so different from us. They discussed the political actions of Roman leaders and whether they could ever have the best interests of the Jews at heart. Perhaps fortunately, they could not scroll a social media feed, but they could and did turn to the scroll of the Torah to make sense of their confusing times. In the midst of all this chaos, a humble young woman set out to visit her cousin to share the good news.
Pope Leo explains: “The Blessed Virgin thus becomes ‘poet and prophetess of Redemption,’ because on her lips is proclaimed ‘the strongest and most innovative hymn ever articulated, the Magnificat.’”
This prayer, sung at the moment of the Visitation, remains our own personal cry of hope on the battlefield of daily life, “for He has mercy on those who fear Him in every generation.”
The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth marks a powerful moment of hope in salvation history. As a lowly and humble woman, Mary “magnifies the Lord” and “rejoices in God her Savior.”
The Holy Father points out that Mary now sees what had previously been invisible:
“Mary suddenly sees all of history through the lens of this revelation. Nothing has changed around her; the socio-political situation of her time remains the same. The Romans continue to control her land, and her people are still subjugated and humiliated. Yet, everything has changed within her, and this allows her to see what is invisible.”
What this means for us today
We too can see the invisible when we step away from the secular noise and reflect on the Visitation as our own moment in salvation history. Even as worldly problems seem to close in on us, Pope Leo reminds us:
“God has already shown the strength of his arm; he has already scattered the proud, cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed… His plan is one that is often hidden beneath the opaque context of human events that see ‘the proud, the mighty and the rich’ triumph. Yet his secret strength is destined in the end to be revealed.”
All our secular problems are already answered in salvation history. The challenge is to resist becoming so caught up in the drama that we miss the powerful message given during the Visitation.Pope Leo XIV continues:
“The Blessed Virgin Mary not only teaches us to recognize God’s invisible work, but also directs our gaze to ‘the points at which humanity is broken and the world becomes distorted: the contrast between the humble and the powerful, the poor and the rich, the satiated and the hungry,’ teaching us ‘to look at the world from a lower position: through the eyes of those who suffer rather than the mighty; to view history through the eyes of the little ones, rather than through the perspective of the powerful; to interpret the events of history from the viewpoint of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the wounded child, the exile and the fugitive.’”
Finally, Pope Leo invites us to reflect on God’s invisible work in our own lives and to help others see what most do not:
“With the same faith as Mary, let us become ‘weavers of hope’ in our world, sharing who we are and what we have, so that the presence of Jesus may grow among us and his Kingdom take shape. In the humble fidelity of daily life, even the era of AI can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love in our lives.”
