There are so many announcements and proclamations made that sometimes you could be forgiven for being a little underwhelmed by their content. Having a national alert scheme on mobile phones that is used when it’s a bit windy is maybe one example, or yet another announcement from the House of Sussex in Exile that they are both very happy and enjoying life in Lala Land maybe another. We are relentlessly spammed by interesting sounding headlines online which, on being clicked on, tell us something very mundane and open a cesspit of adverts and links that need surgical extraction, whereas items of real news, like the war we have been trying to ignore these past thirty years, are barely alluded to. There is nothing new, just the same old stuff, chewed over in different ways by perversely similar teeth.

The lectionary readings today are full of greetings, announcements, introductions and declarations. New things are beginning and they, I hope, bear more need of our attention than what Keir Starmer cannot quite manage to accomplish today. We are offered new ministers when previous ones get found out for the same old stuff, and we seem incapable of escaping the gavage machine of celebrity and failure that we gorge on.

But here, New characters are presented. A great drama – the divine-human drama of salvation – is to come to its fullness. The stage is set, and we ourselves are not the audience but co-characters to be caught up in the scope and sweep of the majestic creativity of the Father, Spirit and the crucified Christ. We do not vote for them, but we live with them.

There is a quickening within divine providence. A new light is dawning on the landscapes of grace.

From one hill-top village to another a young woman moves ‘with great haste’. How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of her who bears Good News!

For he himself will be Peace. Shepherds and sheep await angelic visitations. In the East, camels and kings set out on a star-lit trek. The ox and the ass know their manger; they will soon know their master. Two pregnant women meet.

Two pregnant women meet. It is a scene that could be seen any day in any Tesco’s supermarket or any school playground. Here is the goodness of the ordinary and the mundane and the marvels of life and life-bearing. Here the hinge of salvation begins to open, the Old and New Testament meet in this mundane setting, the Journey of Abraham and Sarah finally comes to an end, and our begins. Here, today, the world begins again and only these two women notice, as only one woman saw the resurrection.

In this ‘mystery’ of our Lady’s visitation of Elizabeth, the ordinary and the extraordinary are caught up in each other. Not just in the transfiguration of the ordinary into the extraordinary. But in the transfiguration of the extraordinary into the ordinary. The divine Word is abbreviated into the wonder of maternity. And Elijah is dancing in the chariot of his mother’s womb. Grace is abounding upon grace, and the angels gaze on in wonder.

Here blessings are not just descending from on high, but they are magnified in sharing and they are glorified in praise and thanksgiving ascending. That God can bless us is one thing: that he can empower us to bless one another is the same thing, the same gift. Elizabeth and Mary sing their duet of blessings shared and blessings abounding, calling to each other as only the gatekeepers of eternity may do, knowing that when Nature takes Her course, she will fulfil the word of God, and the salvation we long for will be ours. It’s a hard road they tread, and one full of judgement, but with each other, they may be free for a moment to be in rapture. Two women, dancing on the edge of time.

Elizabeth adds her line of prayer to the Ave Maria begun by the angel Gabriel in wonder at ‘the most blessed among all women’. And Mary in her Magnificat sings the praises of her Spirit-conceived Son in his obedient mission from the Father – ‘from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace’.

There is nothing outwardly remarkable to be seen by a passer-by or a curious neighbour. In Jerusalem what is to be rendered to Caesar is rendered to Caesar, the builders are laying stone upon stone in the renovated Temple: the priests are daily offering sacrifices at the altar; and Herod’s soldiers are sharpening their swords. The ordinary carries on in the usual routine of daily life.

But grace abounds. And the world is changing, in the wombs of the women. Salvation is about to take its first breath.