Our Witness is a Vital Part of God’s Plan

31 May 2025   Luke 1:39-56

The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”’”  Luke 1:43​

The most quoted woman in the world is not the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Nor is it Mother Teresa, or Margaret Thatcher, or Oprah Winfrey, or Eleanor Roosevelt, or any of the other bigshots.

The most quoted woman in the world is St. Elizabeth, whose words are quoted tens of millions of times every day, in hundreds of languages, on every continent when people pray the rosary: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus” (Luke 1:42).

St. Elizabeth is mentioned fleetingly in Luke 1, and she never appears again anywhere in the Bible. She is one of many nameless or nearly nameless people in the Bible, the kind whose names appear late in the credits of movies, if they appear at all, just below “man in bar” and “assistant key grip.” Yet it is part of the humor of God that these people wind up being the ones whose words and witness frame our knowledge of the saving plan of God.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will’” (Luke 2:13-14). This astonishing heavenly choir appeared to a bunch of nameless shepherds, who hurried to Bethlehem to witness the first moments of the world’s salvation, and then promptly disappeared into history without signing the guest book. We have no idea who they were, but we haven’t celebrated Christmas without them. Ever.

“There is a lad here who has five barley loaves, and two fish; but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9). He was just a face in a huge crowd, but nobody had a closer look at the Feeding of the Five Thousand, a story which is told six times in the gospels, more than the accounts of the Resurrection, and with more detail. We know not just about how many people ate, but even how many leftovers there were. It is the most well-attested miracle story in the New Testament, and apart from the disciples, we don’t know the name of a single person who was there.

Three thousand people joined the church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41). A crowd of as many as five hundred people saw the Risen Christ at the same time (I Corinthians 15:6). The overwhelming majority of those who knew Christ first and gave birth to the Church that gave birth to us are people whose names we will never know this side of the kingdom. This gives us ample reason to believe that the overwhelming majority of the people who will know Christ next will hear about Him not from the bigshots, but from people like us.

Since our witness is such a vital part of God’s providential plan, we have a responsibility to make sure our witness is vigorous, orderly, and effective. To that end, here are some things we should do:

Be Attentive. Be alert to the things that are right in front of you. Ask basic questions, e.g. Where is your Bible? Why is it there and not some other place? What does your Bible look like? New? Old? Used? Pristine? Apart from the printed text, is there any other writing? Marginal notes? Letters or notes you’ve saved? Why are they there?

Be Intelligent. Do the answers to your questions about your Bible fall into any patterns? Do they justify any conclusions? If so, which ones?

Be Reasonable. Do the conclusions you have reached reveal positive features about your character and witness? Do they reveal any negative features of your character and witness? Do the conclusions indicate a way forward?

Be Responsible. Live out the decision you have made about your character and witness. And repeat the process again. And again.

All the bigshots have followed a process like this, a spiral of reflection taking them deeper into God and nearer heaven. All religious revivals, the great bursts of spiritual power that redirect history and culture, including the next one, happen when people like us, the nameless ones on whom God depends, follow something like it too.