In our First Reading and Psalm we hear of Hannah returning to the temple of God in Shiloh, leaving her young son, Samuel, there with Eli, fulfilling the desperate promise she made to the God she loved that if He blessed her with a child, she would give that child to Him. Our Psalm is her song of gratitude to God, a foreshadowing of the song we hear Our Lady sing in our Gospel when she is visiting her kinswoman, Elizabeth, who herself is pregnant against all expectation with the last prophet, John the Baptist. The singing of songs and miraculous pregnancies are not the only parallels here, however.
Our Gospel mentions that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months; in ancient times, when David had recovered the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines, and after a man named Uzzah died touching the Ark during its trip, the king said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” (2 Samuel 6:9), foreshadowing the greeting Elizabeth would give to Mary upon her visit: “How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). The Ark remained in the home of a man named Obed-edom for three months before David returned to escort it into the city, dancing before the Ark the entire way. When Mary greets Elizabeth, her unborn son leaps in her womb (Luke 1:41, 44): the Ark of the New Covenant (Revelation 11:19, 12:1) had come! The ancient Ark was wood covered in gold with angels atop it; the Mother of God, greeted by an archangel and overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, was the epitome of human purity and holiness, second only to her own Son, and as St. Jerome wrote, “…assuredly no gold or silver vessel was ever so dear to God as the temple of a virgin’s body.” Within the Ark of old was the staff of Aaron the priest, a jar of manna, and the tablets of the Commandments (Hebrews 9:4). Yet within Mary was Jesus the High Priest (Hebrews 4:14-15), Jesus the True Bread from Heaven (John 6:49-51), Jesus the Word of God not in stone, but in flesh (John 1:14).
And there, in every Catholic Church, is the tabernacle, bearing the very same gift—Jesus—that we might have Christmas not once a year, but every day. “…my spirit rejoices in God my savior…He has filled the hungry with good things…” Mary sings. May our owns spirits learn to sing her song as well, as we approach the Blessed Sacrament this Christmas, and every Mass after.