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St. Elizabeth (relative of Mary)
00:19:37
Saint Elizabeth of the Bible may be considered one of the first members of Christ’s Church as she greets Mary and proclaims her as the “Mother of my Lord.” Dr. Elizabeth Klein and Dr. Michael Barber discuss how Saint Elizabeth is a model for the family of the Church and faith that God fulfills what He has spoken. Hear how her story of the miraculous conception and birth of John the Baptist can be a testament of faith to our lives in this episode of the Catholic Saints Podcast.
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Podcast Host
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Hello and welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their legacy for the church and for us. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Klein, and I'm joined today by my colleague, Dr. Michael Barber, to talk about St. Elizabeth, that is, of the Bible. Welcome, Dr. Barber.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Thanks for having me here.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
So, before we jump into things, I think this is the first time you've been on the podcast with me. So you're a Bible scholar. What is your favorite book of the Bible to teach?
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Dr. Michael Barber
Well, my favorite book of the Bible would have to be the Gospel of Matthew. It's there we find the Sermon on the Mount, which is understood in Christian tradition as the perfect sermon. And there we have the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer. You just can't get any better from.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Me than it's a little long for the perfect sermon. I'm just kidding. We won't get into that. I'm very excited to be talking about a biblical saint. I think we maybe don't reflect as much on the biblical saints and their feasts. I go to a Byzantine liturgy, and they tend to highlight especially the Old Testament saints a little more in their liturgical calendar. So I'm looking forward to this. So tell me a little bit about St. Elizabeth. Where it we find her story in the Bible and maybe other traditions we know about her?
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Dr. Michael Barber
Well, the primary source for our knowledge of Saint Elizabeth is the Gospel of Luke. And in the Gospel of Luke, she is identified as the kinswoman or the cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So here we have a relative of Jesus. And of course, she's also the mother of John the Baptist. Luke tells us that she was of the daughters of Aaron. So she was a member of the priestly family. This raises questions about, well, then how was Mary her cousin? Was Mary also part of the priestly line? And some people have tried to suggest that the two different genealogies in Matthew and Luke point one direction in Joseph's genealogy, the other to Mary's direction. I'm not so sure about that. We're not really clear on how Mary and Elizabeth are exactly related other than that they are kinswomen, as the New Testament is typically translated. But maybe the most important thing about Elizabeth is she gives us a line that we use regularly in the Hail Mary, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. So here we have a line. I think we're all very familiar with as Catholics, and it comes to us from this great saint.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's awesome. So you can say a little more. I haven't thought through really deeply about sort of their relationship as kinswomen and what that might say about Elizabeth's sort of ability to praise Mary or speak about her, maybe. I don't know if you've had any reflections on that. And then, of course, also of reflections on her as a mother of John the Baptist, which, you know, it didn't seem like an easy job to be the mother of John the Baptist, that he's not necessarily, like, the most relatable kid, doesn't pick a typical career path, you know.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Yeah, of course, the amazing thing about Elizabeth is that she has been barren. We know that Zechariah and Elizabeth had no children. And so the announcement to Zechariah that Elizabeth is going to conceive and bear a child is in and of itself, miraculous. Nobody would have expected Elizabeth to be able to bear a child in her old age. And so right from the start, we have an unusual child. Right now, we don't really know how long Zechariah and Elizabeth lived after the birth of John the Baptist.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
All right, maybe Elizabeth was spared.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Yeah, exactly.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
We don't know the Passion of John.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Yes, that's right. We really don't know that she lived to see her son be executed by Herod. But what we do know is that Elizabeth is a very faithful woman. And one of the things that stands out to me about the story in the Gospel of Luke about Elizabeth is after John the Baptist is born, they gather together for the circumcision and for the naming of this child. And they ask Elizabeth what his name will be. And normally they would ask the father, but as you probably remember, Zechariah was mute because he didn't believe the word that the angel had spoken to him about John the Baptist's birth. And so they ask Elizabeth what his name shall be. And they want to name him after his father. Let me just get that passage up. They come together to celebrate, to name him. They want to name him Zechariah after his father. And we read his mother said, no, no, he is to be called John. So even though it was Zechariah that experienced that angelic visitation, he's communicated this to his wife, and his wife fully believes him. And his wife is adamant, no, we're going to name him John. And then they go to Zechariah and they say, well, this can't be what's his name? And then Zechariah asks for a writing tablet, and he writes, his name is John. So it's really beautiful here in the story to me that Elizabeth and Zechariah are standing together in faithfulness. And it's sort of a vindication of Elizabeth. When Zechariah says no, she's right. Listen to my wife. She knows what she's talking about here.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that parallel then between sort of Zechariah and Joseph. Cause Joseph is the one who's given the name Jesus and Mary, and it's Zachariah who's given the name John and not Elizabeth. And yet sort of their mutual faith communicates the name. That. I hadn't even thought about that with the tradition of names in the Bible generally. And how important, sort of the announcement of the name is sort of as a sign of God's plan. So is there something about the name John that could be said or.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Well, I think the main thing that I'd like to just highlight is her recognition that this is. There are different ways you could do the etymology, but I think the more important point is that Elizabeth really believes first, her husband. Right? She really trusts her husband. When her husband says, hey, this is what the angel says, she listens to him. Now, of course, she has to be pretty surprised that she's pregnant. So I'm sure Zechariah's got a little bit of credibility here when he comes home and says, hey, guess what, honey, I got some news. Actually, kids say that to her. But when he communicates that to her in some way. Now that must have been difficult to communicate, right, when you can't speak. But what does Mary say to Elizabeth after she says, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb? She says, why has this happened to me? This is the story of the visitation. Why has this happened to me? That the mother of my Lord comes to me. And here we see Mary identified as the mother of the Lord. The mother of God. Right. She says, for as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And then she says, blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. So Mary is blessed because she believed what the Lord said. And Elizabeth knows firsthand that it's not always easy to believe these angelic announcements because her husband is suddenly mu. Because he did not believe. And so Elizabeth is recognizing, okay, what Mary has done here is truly extraordinary. And I want to honor her. She truly is not just the mother of the king, but the mother of my Lord. Here we have shades of Theotokos. Right. In fact, one biblical scholar, C. Calvin Rowe, says that this is the most remarkable verse in the entire New Testament, because here Jesus is identified as Kurios, as the Lord, in the same place where she says, you know, this is. You believed it was spoken by the Lord, so you're the mother of the Lord and you believe what was spoken by the Lord. So she seems to be identifying Jesus as the Lord. Right. So, anyway, I think the. The more amazing aspect of this is Elizabeth's faith.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, that's really beautiful. I hadn't quite thought about it in that way, especially vis a vis, know, her believing the word of Zechariah, who did not believe the word of the Lord. And then she's very prepared to praise and honor Mary for having done what her husband didn't do. But this doesn't imply she didn't respect or honor him at all, because she believes him.
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Dr. Michael Barber
She does believe him.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And they have this mutual understanding and they have this mutual gift of their son John. And yet it then prepares her to sort of be able to praise Mary and understand the difficulties of Mary because both of them experience unexpected, difficult pregnancies. But Mary's is a lot harder than Elizabeth's. You know, Elizabeth has this joy of a pregnancy in old age with her husband, but Mary has this unexpected pregnancy before she's married at a very young age. And so it was even more difficult for Mary to believe the word of the Lord than it was for Zechariah. Yeah.
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Dr. Michael Barber
And it is amazing that Mary makes this incredible journey as a pregnant woman to go and help apparently her older cousin, who apparently would need help in her pregnancy as well. And so she's just astonished that Mary. And she knows, well what's happened with Mary because of Zechariah's encounter with the angel. She's just astonished at this. And I think she speaks words that we can all speak.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right.
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Dr. Michael Barber
That Mary is blessed because she believed. Right. And so if that's what makes a person blessed, then help me to believe as well.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And this is making me think about sort of why God would have chosen pregnant women to be in some way, his like, preeminent prophets at the very beginning, in terms of the difficulty that's going to come with the cross, because Christ himself compares the cross to a woman in labor. And we, you know, we all know labor is hard even in the modern day. But to think about the difficulty and vulnerability of a pregnant woman in the ancient world, not only both of them being in sort of awkward situations, but, you know, when you get pregnant in the ancient world, you're already accepting death on behalf of the child. I mean, there's a very good chance that it's going to be a tough going and that you could die in childbirth. And so that's why I think Jesus uses that analogy right from the very beginning, from the incarnation, Jesus is prepared to die for his children. He knows that. And Mary and Elizabeth, in their extraordinary faith, know the cost of accepting the Lord's word from, from the very beginning. I hadn't really kind of connected all those dots, so that's helpful.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Right. I think it's also significant in the story. It says that of course, Elizabeth insists the child name will be John. Then Zacharias writes down his name will be John. Then his tongue is loosed. And all the people, it says, pondered what had happened. And they all went around talking about what had happened. What will this child become? You've got to imagine that's really difficult for Elizabeth and Zechariah. They're no longer in obscurity. Everybody knows that something miraculous has happened to their son with his birth, with Zechariah being able to speak, suddenly not being able to speak, then being able to speak. I think every parent feels the stress of raising their child and doing a good job by them. But imagine the added pressure of everyone watching out, see what is going to become of this child. That seems so extraordinary. That's got to be a very difficult place.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. And it also speaks to the kind of path of sort of God first disrupts the sort of domestic life of two families. Like that's how he chooses to enter the world. He disrupts the life of these two domestic families and then through them sort of disrupts the whole world. Through John first preaching of Christ and then of course Christ preaching himself, and then the cross. And that so often is how God works in our lives and also in the church. I, I've thought so many times during the Saints podcast that we often expect change in the church to come, like top down. And not to say that it's not good to have top down change. That's good. But that's not often how God works. God usually works through the small, obscure people first disrupts first a family disrupts first a religious community disrupts first a town, and then through those saints, the church. You know, like Francis Assisi is a classic example of this. Like rebuild My church. And he's like, oh, I gotta put some stones in this ramshackle church and doesn't know the prophecy. Right. The prophecy first is you will have a child to both of these women, which is great news. And it's sort of earth shattering for their family, but they only come to learn how ultimately earth shattering that's going to be for the whole world. And that's sort of a neat thing to reflect on with Elizabeth that I hadn't thought about before. So could you say maybe a little bit about the legacy of Saint Elizabeth? Does she get remembered in a particular way? Or what lesson does she sort of leave for the church? Or even if you think about, is there a particular interpretation she gets in the tradition or anything like him that you know about that?
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Dr. Michael Barber
Yeah. I gotta be honest with you. I'm not really sure if she's the patron saint of something in the tradition. We were talking about this earlier. It's kind of like the inside joke in Catholic circles to think of someone, you know as a patron saint. Some of them are kind of off the wall how they become patron saints of things. And that seems almost secondary to their. To their life. But I think the primary way that she leaves the impact is again on Catholic piety. Right. We say the words of Elizabeth in the Hail Mary, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Those are words that we as Catholics are called to meditate upon, to think about. What is it that makes Mary so blessed? It's the fruit of her womb. And Elizabeth is prepared to receive this true gift of the Lord coming to her in the womb of his mother by an angelic visitation to her husband. And so we might think about the way God prepares us to receive the Lord in prayer in the sacraments, and the way he uses our family members to do that.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. And also to think of the church as a family and thinking of ourselves becoming a kinswoman of both Mary and Jesus. The catechism speaks about how the Marian dimension of the Church precedes the Petrine meaning. Sort of Mary's reception of God's Word to her in the Incarnation means she's constituted as the first member of the Church before the sort of hierarchy of the Church exists when Jesus gives authority to Peter. So I never thought about this until this moment, but maybe we could say that Mary Elizabeth, in some sense the second member of the Church because she is Elizabeth's kinswoman and receives the Lord in faith. Sort of second. Or maybe, maybe Joseph, he doesn't say A whole lot. But. But Elizabeth says, you know, sort of identifies herself as both Elizabeth's kinswoman according to the flesh, but also Elizabeth's kinswoman according to faith. Because Augustine famously says that Mary conceives Christ by faith first in her mind before she conceives Christ in the womb. And so we can say there's a sort of parallel thing going on there with Elizabeth that she conceives the forerunner first in her womb, but then by faith in proclamation to Mary when she receives Mary in her home. So it's kind of a. Kind of an interesting thing to think about.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Yeah. She is the patron saint of pregnant women, as you might expect.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Okay, great. Mary's got enough things to be patron so you can look to Elizabeth for difficult pregnancies. I could think of praying to St. Elizabeth for like, that God would send you a good midwife or that God would send you like a good mother in law to help you out. Because I imagine that the Virgin Mary was a pretty good assistant in labor and comforting and in counseling through difficult times. So she could be a patron in that regard.
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Dr. Michael Barber
And maybe if you had an especially soft spoken husband.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
He wasn't Zachariah wasn't really able to be for.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Couldn't really speak.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
He couldn't give. Speak words of affirmation during the labor process. Not that mad typically had that role anyway. But I think it would get up St. Augustine saying that Mary had angels for her midwives, but Elizabeth had Mary for hers. And so that's almost as good or even better than an angel.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Right. All right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Well, finally, maybe just a takeaway for the listeners, something to. I know you've said to meditate on sort of the mode of Elizabeth in receiving Elizabeth into her heart, but do you have any final thoughts for takeaways for prayer with St. Elizabeth?
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Dr. Michael Barber
Well, I would just highlight that Elizabeth believes what was fulfilled, what the Lord has spoken will be fulfilled. And so I think it's appropriate for us to think about what is it that the Lord speaks to us in Scripture and how can we ask for the gift of faith to believe in the fulfillment of those promises? Right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's an amazing. That's such an amazing takeaway for this because we take for granted. And of course, they did have the benefit of angelic visitation, but Elizabeth didn't. Not in person.
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Dr. Michael Barber
That's right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And so Mary and Elizabeth meditating on the Scriptures, do we really believe they'll be fulfilled in. In our own lives? Because it's one thing to believe what the Lord has spoken. That's faith and then have hope that these promises actually fulfilled for us. And that can be extremely challenging. And both Mary and Elizabeth as beautiful examples that. Well, thank you so much and we'll ask for Elizabeth's intercession. St Elizabeth pray for us.
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Dr. Michael Barber
Pray for us.
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Podcast Host
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