Saturday, May 31st, is the Feast of the Visitation,the Titular Feast of the Order of the Visitation.
Scholar Helene Bordes enlightens us theologically about the meaning of this Feast in the mind and heart of St. Francis de Sales, Founder of the Order. In her article, The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales, Ms. Bordes concludes, ” ..in St. Francis de Sales, the mystery of the Visitation is how to live already risen from the dead,and already in the world of the Transfiguration, when creation is not anymore groaning in one great act of giving birth.”
She suggests that in the Visitation, “Easter is lived to its fullness, in the present instant. This reading of the mystery of the Visitation, model of the ‘hidden life’, gives complete unity to the thought and Salesian style,and is for the bishop (St Francis de Sales) the thread that unites the mysteries of faith with them.
To live and to speak the Visitation is to live and to speak Easter in the light of the actual mystery of Christ, the Transfiguration at work in the world and in time. It is the realization of the Incarnation.
The Incarnation is “visitation” of man by God,…
The exchange which is the mystery of the Visitation shows how the love of God and the love of neighbor, comparable but not identical,, cannot function without each other.”
Source: Salesian Insights, 1999.