In her final meditation on the Mass readings for the final days of the Advent journey, our writer notices the physician’s eye in Luke’s telling of the story

The young woman draws breath, then calls out a greeting. Inside her house, the older woman rises on somewhat painful feet. She knows that voice. Putting a hand to her surging belly, Elizabeth’s blessing breaks between the elements, her exhalation giving form to something thus far unuttered. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?

The scene (Luke 1:39-45) will be reprised in its chronological context, as the Mass readings between the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve unfold. Luke’s Gospel lays before us lives transfigured by the flexing of the divine into flesh and blood. Here, as in the Book of Acts, we are in the presence of a master storyteller. Luke may not have been a literal portraitist, but he certainly knows how to paint with words. And he has a physician’s eye for detail. A barren woman is in her sixth month, a virgin is in her first. The events are umbilically linked, the first a sub-plot to the other; which is why Luke devotes so much space to the unfolding story.